English Translation Of Person Deixis In Chinese Legislative Texts

Person deixis is a kind of deictic devices and refers to the participant in speech communication or speech activity. Person deixis is studied in theory and practice from the linguistic perspective in the previous researches, such as logics, semantics, and pragmatics. With regard to the field of discourse analysis coming into being and developing recently, person deixis is studied very little. Moreover, it is found that fewer specialists study person deixis in particular genres. Especially in our country studying the legal field later than the west, special exploration on person deixis in legislative texts is even less. Therefore, based on the previous researches, this paper intends to study the application of person deixis in Chinese legislative texts, and then bring forward its English translation principles and strategies.Legislative texts, mainly including all kinds of laws, regulations, rules, ordinances, and international conventions, are the most representative written legal language owing to their strict logic, normative function and complex form. Language of legislative texts is the core of legal language, and person deixis is a kind of expressive form among it. Meanwhile, person deixis also can play an important role in linking discourses to convey accurate legislative information.Person deixis in legislative texts can be classified into three categories: first person deixis, second person deixis and third person deixis. Third person deixis is mainly used both in Chinese legislative texts and English legislative texts, while the preceding two expressions are rarely used. From the perspective of sentence structure of Chinese and English, the former attaches importance to parataxis, while the latter values on hypotaxis; the former focuses on logic in sentence meaning, while the latter pays attention to conjunction in grammar. Thus, when translating person deixis in Chinese legislative texts, corresponding translation principles is needed to be complied with so as to accurately transfer information and avoid ambiguities according to respective characteristics. In view of studies of features and functions of person deixis in legislative texts and contrastive analysis of person deixis in Chinese and English legislative texts, this thesis proposes four translation principles: accuracy, fluency, normativeness and equivalence. The principle of accuracy plays an important role in translation of legal texts, that is, person deixis is required to be translated into precise expression to avoid legal dissensions. The principle of fluency is achieved by free translation not mechanical translation to conform to legislative practices in common-law countries according to discrepancy of legal cultures and difference of expressive customs of language in China and the west. The principle of normativeness requires that person deixis adopted in the translated texts should be standardized written language, such as archaic words. The principle of equivalence is not absolute equivalence, as long as legal effect yielded in the translation in the English-speaking countries is equal to that yielded in the original in the source-language nations.Based on translation principles, this paper puts forward four strategies of translating person deixis: preservation, conversion, omission and accession. The four translation strategies have their own features and should be chosen to be adopted in the light of specific context in order to produce an accurate, natural and cohesive translation.