"Information Equivalence" In Legal Translation

The present paper is a study on legal translation from the point of view of equivalence, with the purpose of providing some guidance for translators and legal English learners who are not familiar with legal translation as well as those who are interested in it. The present paper gives a detailed review of the theory of equivalence as defined by some translation theorists in the field, such as Catford, Jacobson, Newmark and Nida. It is undeniable that these theorists have provided fruitful achievements for further study on equivalence. In spite of the great theorists' achievements, most of the theories have their weak points. Compared with other equivalence theory, Nida's is more feasible. It is also believed by the author of the present paper that Nida's functional equivalence is the better one for guiding legal translation.Legal language, unlike ordinary language, is the language for special professional use and has a unique nature and many peculiar features. Therefore, legal translation is much demanding. The author of the present paper endeavors to put forward a feasible theory which may contribute to legal translation. Different from ordinary English, it is believed by the author that the special nature and features of legal language should be taken into consideration. Sarcevic (1997:71-72) believes that a translator's main task is to make the target text to be of the same legal effect as the original text, under which circumstances, the translator should not only understand the meaning of words and sentences but also how to realize such kind of legal effect in the target language. Therefore, it is believed by the author of the present paper that legal translation requires not only functional equivalence of language which is supported by Nida's theory (including the equivalence of meaning and style) but also the equivalence of legal effect or the equivalence of legal function. Taking into consideration that there is no ready concept to define such kind of equivalence, the author of the present paper proposes a new concept that is different from Nida's functional equivalence, that is "information equivalence".The author of the present paper, adopting a bottom-up approach, urges people to apply the aforesaid information equivalence in legal translation, which is more acceptable. The present paper puts forward concrete strategies at the lexical level, syntactical level and textual level, and it is proved here that information equivalence is suitable for legal translation. Information equivalence is bound to make a little contribution to legal translation theory. However, every theory is not the final and perfect one. We still have a long way to go if we want to put forward a relatively more mature one.