A Study Of The Linguistic Features Of Marine Insurance Act 1906

This thesis is concerned with the linguistic features of Marine Insurance Act 1906 as a legislation regulating the duties and obligations in the field of marine insurance. The study commences with a brief introduction to marine insurance and the Marine Insurance Act 1906. Following this overview is a detailed discussion of the linguistic features of the act from the perspective of style, lexicon and syntax, in which the author highlights the terminology of marine insurance. The following chapter is devoted to the criteria of translation of legal documents, based on the unique features of legal English. By comparing the translation theories in the west and in China, the author proposes the criteria in the translation of legal documents. To highlight the practical significance of the criteria proposed, the next two chapters elaborate on analyzing the merits and inadequacies of the Chinese version of Marine Insurance Act 1906, with some tentative corrections rendered as well. Therefore, this thesis has its practical as well as its theoretical value in that it sheds a light on how to translate legal English, a language for special purpose: how to deal with the differences between English and Chinese in translating legal documents and how to faithfully reproduce the essence of the original text while at the same time maintaining the smoothness and readability of the translated text.