A Probe Into E-C Translation Of Shipping Legal Documents

With the deepening of its reform and opening to the outside world, China is getting involved in the international shipping operations ever-increasingly profoundly and widely. In the highly-legalized contemporary society, shipping legal documents are yardsticks for economic activities in the shipping circle. So it is necessary for us Chinese, the new participant in the field, to learn from the international shipping laws and regulations and those of other countries as well. We need to learn about other countries' shipping laws and regulations to enact ours. Under such circumstances, E-C translation of shipping legal documents becomes increasingly necessary and important. But there has been an absence of systematic theory about translation of shipping legal documents. This thesis tries to explore the application of equivalence theory to E-C translation of shipping legal documents.In E-C translation of shipping legal documents, the features of shipping legal English should be kept in mind. Shipping legal English is quite different from everyday English in that it has its unique lexical, syntactical and textual features. On the basis of the study of these features, the author of this thesis intends to apply equivalence theory to the E-C translation of shipping legal documents and tries to find some leads that would be helpful in the E-C translation of shipping legal documents though she is fully aware that the thesis cannot contribute much to the establishment of a systematic theory of shipping legal document translation.The thesis consists of an introduction and four chapters. The introduction illustrates the situation of the E-C translation of shipping legal documents.Chapter 1 provides basic information on shipping legal documents. It begins with an introduction of legal language, and then presents a general contrastive analysis of legal English and legal Chinese at the lexical, syntactic and textual levels. At the end of the chapter, the author defines shipping legal documents and points out the importance of E-C translation of shipping legal documents.Chapter 2 deals with translation theories. The author first introduces the concept of legal translation, and then generalizes Jacobson's and Nida's equivalence theories. Finally the author stresses the necessity of combining translation theory with features of shipping legal English in translation and tentatively puts forward four principles of the E-C translation of shipping legal documents: faithfulness, accuracy, smoothness and consistence.Chapter 3, the main body of this thesis, analyzes prominent features of shipping legal English from lexical, syntactic and textual perspectives. On the basis of an overall study of characteristics of shipping legal documents, the author applies equivalence theory to the E-C translation of shipping legal documents. The lexical characteristics are analyzed in seven aspects: (1) Archaisms, (2) Loanwords, (3) Technical Terms, (4) Common Words with Uncommon Meanings, (5) Formal Words, (6) Coordination of Synonyms or Near-synonyms, (7) Abbreviations. The study at the syntactic level covers Declarative Sentences, Basic Sentence Pattern, Passive Sentences, Use of "Shall", Nominalization, Rare Adoption of Pronouns, Parallel Structure and Long Sentences. At the end of this chapter, the study is made at the textual level. Shipping legal texts generally consist of the following parts: (1) Preamble, (2) Substantive Provisions and (3) Final Clauses.Chapter 4 is a conclusion made up of a summary and limitations and further suggestions. The author points out that the E-C translation of shipping legal documents is a serious job. Great care is needed in handling such translation. The researches on translation of shipping legal documents are quite inadequate and far from satisfactory. This area requires greater strenuous efforts and more profound studies. In the course of writing this thesis, the author has come to realize that great efforts shall be made in this field so as to help translators make good E-C translation of shipping legal documents. Having made a tentative probe into this field, the author sincerely hopes that her thesis will make a little contribution to translation study of shipping legal documents.