On The Applicability Of Equivalence Strategy To Sentence Translation In English And Chinese Legislation

Legislative language refers to the language used in laws and regulations, and it is a register in lingua franca, which carries legislative function, thus translation of legislative language is of high value of research. Nowadays, translation theories applied in legislative translation mainly are Nida's dynamic equivalence theory, Newmark's communicative theory, Catford's textual equivalence theory and so on, all of which have respective emphasis in legal translation. However, as for legislative translation, the author of the present thesis holds the preferable opinion towards the static equivalence strategy proposed by Li Kexing, a famous professor of Hong Kong University of Technology. Theoretically, the static equivalence strategy is applicable to the legal translation, especially the legislative sentence translation, which is determined by the features of legislative sentences, strict translation principles, the specific readers of the translated version and the purpose of translation. Nevertheless, is the static equivalence applied to legislative translation in practice? Bearing these questions in mind, the author begins with the comparative analysis of the features of English and Chinese legislative sentences, establishing the principles of legislative translation, and manages to prove the applicability of the static equivalence strategy in the legislative sentence translation through the study of authoritative translation of legislative sentences.The research is made up of the following five Chapters.In Chapter One, the author gives an introduction of this thesis.In Chapter Two, the author analyzes the theoretical reason of the applicability of the static equivalence strategy and expounds respectively the differences between the static equivalence and the literal translation and between the static equivalence and the dynamic equivalence, constituting the theoretical framework of the study.In Chapter Three, the author makes the comparative study of English and Chinese legislative sentences, respectively illustrating the common features, differences and distinctive features of English and Chinese legislative sentences.Chapter Four is the core section of the study. To begin with, the author reviews the basic principles of legal translation, establishing the principles of legislative sentence translation. Furthermore, observing the translated versions of typical sentence patterns in authoritative translated text, the author finds that the translated versions of typical sentence patterns are relatively static and stable; analyzing several frequently adopted translating skills, the author draws the conclusion that the seemingly flexible translation skills are helpful to achieve the utmost equivalence on deep meaning, surface meaning, format and style, which coincides with the definition of the static equivalence strategy. In summary, the static equivalence translation strategy is applicable to the legislative sentence translation in practice.Chapter Five makes a summary of the whole thesis, drawing the conclusion that the static equivalence theory is applicable to the translation of legislative sentence. Finally, the author points out the limitations of the current research.