Reconstruction Of The Criterion Of Ya In Legal Translation

As one of the oldest activities during the historic process of human society, translation emerged almost at the same time as human language appeared.Translation studies is the high generalization on the research of translation activities,and the translation theories of all ages,abroad or home,have established a foundation of systematic theory and offered the criteria or principles for the contemporary or subsequent translation.In spite of various contradictory argumentative statements,the translation criteria of "xin,da and ya",proposed by Yah Fu,have been still abided by translators at present for more than a century.When Fan Fu was studying in Britain(in the 1870s),he "often attended the trials in courts as an observer",being greatly awakened by the western judicial system after making a contrastive study of the laws or imperial politics at that time in China. Accordingly,after he was back in China,he translated many works concerning legal science and politics,which was regarded as the initiation of systematically translating legal or politic works in the modern times of China.It was then that he proposed the triplet theory of "xin,da and ya" or "faithfulness,expressiveness and elegance" as criteria to guide his own legal and political translation though the triplet theory has been even today adopted to measure literary translation,Sci-Tec translation and any other field of translation including legal translation.At the meantime,the doctrine of "xin,da and ya" has caused a heated debate with various splendid viewpoints from different academic schools in the field of translation studies,especially the relevant interpretation of"ya".This paper advocates that Yan Fu put forth his "xin,da and ya" against a special historical background in that period,aiming to direct the legal or political translation in practice.However,most of translation studies in China are prone to its instructional application in literary translation.This paper may leave it undiscussed for lack of space,and it concentrates on the guidance of "ya" in legal translation. As one of the ancient anesthetic concepts in the history of Chinese anesthetics,ya does not only mean "elegance" or "dignified".Merely in The Word Ocean(1979),we can find that ya has no less than eleven various senses,one of which refers to something normative or canonical.As a translation criterion,"ya" to Yan Fu is to get close to the normative or standard translation.Pan Wenguo,a famous specialist who focuses on the comparative studies of Chinese-English,observes that "ya" is actually the key word in Yan Fu's three-character translation principles.Those who deny the function of "ya" virtually deny all the theory of "xin,da and ya".Wang Zuoliang,an outstanding scholar,shares the same idea that closely combined with "xin",ya is an endeavor performed by translators during the process of translating,rather than a kind of beautification.Therefore,it is reasonably believed that "ya" proposed by Yan Fu represents at least three aspects such as the standard of morality a translator abides by, the content of the source work to be conveyed as well as the target language to be used to express the source one.In other words,a translator has to obey the following principles:1) the translational morality of ya.When choosing what to be translated, Yan Fu tended to consider the urgent need of the target readers so as to recommend the superior insight and judgment of the academic achievements in the western world;2) the translational behavior of ya.In history some translators ever abused or violated their responsibilities for translation and made some error in translation.Conversely, under the guidance of the criteron "ya",Yan Fu made every effort to be loyal to the source text,even spending many days in translating one word or term,and reproduced a similar meaning and anesthetic appreciation as closely as possible for the target readers;3) the translation quality of ya,i.e.fidelity to the source text.Yan Fu tried hard to capture the truthful original meaning,and rewrote the source spirit faithfully in translation.From the discussion above,in the perspective of ya,the paper takes the English version of The T'ang Code done by Wallace Johnson,as the language material,and attempts tentatively to deal with some possible problems a translator may encounter in the process of his translating Chinese legal classics.It is reasonable enough to believe that whether the translated work is suitable for ya or not actually depends on the translator's professional morality viewing from ya.By means of the analysis of the English version of The T'ang Code,we can detect what endeavor Wallace Johnson had made to achieve the equivalent of ya through image maintained,conveyed,added or omitted.Instead of expressing merely the simple meaning of the source text literally, he devotes himself to manifest the characteristics of the original writer and the spirit of the source text.In this regard,what we have got from the analytical study above can be used to evaluate how much "ya" is appropriately signified in the English version of The T'ang Code,given by Johnson.