Legal Translation And Its Strategies: From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Legal language is by nature an applied language with special communicative functions. Due to its unique natures and characteristics, legal translation is a by far more demanding job than the translation of ordinary languages. Moreover, since legal language is characterized by authorization, enforcement and solemnity, the legal translator is required to be more prudent while adopting her/his translation strategies and methodology. Linguistic scholars and translation theorists have, as of, put forward numerous different theories and logics concerning legal translation strategies. Some even argue that the word-for-word translation strategy should be attempted to keep the intention of laws and maintain the features of the original legal texts. However, though accuracy and faithfulness should be held as the highest denominators of legal translation, they cannot be secured purely with literal translation. What is worse, overstatement of the formal equivalence of words and expressions may result in misunderstanding of meaning or loss of legal information and legal effect in the process of transmission.In this sense, what translation strategies should be employed by the translator to meet the special law requirements, achieve the purpose and reach the standards of legal translation? In another word, what are the decisive factors to influence adaptation of legal translation strategies? Nowadays in China, it seems that much has been said or argued in journals or MA dissertations concerning the studies of legal English and the application of functional equivalence to legal translation. However, up to now the studies have merely focused on certain aspects of legal English, for instance, its lexical and syntactical features and so on and are apparently not systematic and theoretical due to various reasons. Professor Du Jinbang believed that legal communication should follow three basic principles and advocated to conduct an in-depth study on forensic linguistics. Unfortunately, his focus is on pure forensic linguistics and little attention is paid to legal translation practice.The present thesis holds that Skopostheorie proposed by German functionalism and the translation-oriented text typology study could provide a new perspective for law translating practice and strategy adoption. In the previous study and practice, translators tended to attach too much importance to the lexical and syntactical levels of language, while neglected the influence exerted by textual functions and purposes on translation. Skopostheorie, however, attempts to find out a new way of adopting translation methods through a systematic analysis of skopos of different types of legal texts. The author of the present thesis is thus inclined to apply this theory in legal translation process.Furthermore, many scholars hold that realization of equal legal effect of the translations should take priority over the accuracy of information transmission because of the particular features of legal languages. In terms of this problem, the present thesis maintains that equal reproduction of the legal effect of the original legal text and transmission of the accurate information of the source text do not contradict with each other. Equal legal effect would not be achieved without an accurate transmission of information, and the ultimate goal of accurate informative transmission is to produce a translation that preserves the legal effect of the original as much as possible. It is beyond question that the parallel texts of the bilingual or multilingual contracts may have equal legal effects where the target text is translated as the authentic. In many cases, however, the equal transmission of legal effect of the original text is not even expected in translating practice. Therefore, while it is commonly accepted that the formality of legal language helps to realize the solemnity of law, the translator should be aware of the various communicative functions of different types of legal texts, combing the distinct characteristics of legal language to choose translation methods in translating process.Skopostheorie, a well-known point of translation criticism, was put forward by German functional scholars in the 1970s. In his book Translation Criticism: the Potentials and Limitations, Katharina Reiss, the founder of functional theory, insisted on the original-text-centered equivalence theory, believing that an ideal translation should be an equivalent to the source text at conceptual, linguistic and communicative levels. However, she found in translation practice that in some cases the equivalence standard could not be reached or even was undesired to reach. Rather, the translator had alternatives in adaptation of translation strategies in accordance with special requirements of translation commission. She therefore held that the translator should give priority to the target text's function in case the function of the target text is contrary to that of the source text.Hans J. Vermeer established Skopostheorie afterwards, which highlighted the potential skopos or functions of target text while choosing translation strategies and methods. He viewed"skopos rule"as the foremost principle of translation. According to"skopos rule,"a translation activity is determined by its purpose, namely the"purpose justifies means."Other rules are intra-coherence and inter-coherence either of which is subordinate to the skopos rule. Skopostheorie was then developed by the functionalists such as Mattari and Nord, with the latter supplementing the"function and loyalty"principle to the theory, which solved the problem of incompatibility between the target text function and the source text function.The present study tends to observe the functional typology of legal texts and their translation strategies from the perspective of Skopostheorie. This author believes that taking flexible translation strategies with the aid of translation-oriented typology of legal texts in the light of Skopostheorie is highly admirable. It is also believed that the translator should combine the characteristics of legal language and the rules of Skopostheorie to find out appropriate translation strategies and methods in her/his translation practice.