Legal Translation Under Plain Meaning Rule

This thesis attempts to illustrate that translation strategies under the guidance of plain meaning rule succeed in conveying the faithful meaning of the source text while retaining legal effect in legal translation on the basis of a detailed analysis of the relationship between plain meaning rule and legal translation. Plain meaning rule, as a canon of statutory interpretation, gives words their plain, ordinary and reasonable meaning in order to interpret the legislative intent and maintain the legal effect of the source text. It helps translators get accurate understanding of the source text and then render faithful translation, provides cognitive supplement to the translators in legal translation and helps the legal translation to retain the legal effect of the source text.Translation strategies under the plain meaning rule vary in the legal translation. In order to achieve a faithful rendering of meaning of the source text, literal or semantic translation might be better applied in the legal translation. For the purpose of improving the readability of legal translation, getting fuller and more proper meaning of the target text and enriching the legal system of target language, foreignization is applied to the legal translation. In order to maintain the legal effect of the source text, functional equivalence and communicative translation are adopted under the plain meaning rule because both of them render the closest natural equivalent to the source language message or, in other word, create equivalent effect.This paper is a theoretical innovation of linguistics and jurisprudence by combining the basic theory of jurisprudence and applying statutory interpretation to legal translation in order to prove that the flexible application of the above translation strategies under the guidance of plain meaning rule can render better translation faithfully and help convey the meaning while maintaining the desired legal effect of the source text.