Application Of Skopostheorie To English-Chinese Legal Translation

This thesis explores the guidance of Skopostheorie to the translation ofEnglish-Chinese legal texts.Firstly, the thesis provides a brief overview of legal translation in the west and inChina, surveys research and studies on legal translation in China over the past threedecades. On the basis of this, it is found that compared with other types of translation,especially in the literary translation, the research on legal translation is lagged behindboth in terms of quality and quantity and that there is lack of a certain authoritativetranslation theory to guide legal translation.Next, the thesis discusses major linguistic features of English legal text on thelevels of lexicon, syntax and semantics, which paves the way for addressing thelinguistic problems in English-Chinese legal translation.Then, the thesis gives a brief literature review on Skopostheorie which is the coreof functionalist translation theory.After that the thesis expounds and proves the applicability of Skopostheorie asthe guiding theory in legal translation and finally explores specific translationtechniques in the translation of English-Chinese legal texts under the guidance ofSkopostheorie.Finally, it is concluded that Skopostheorie can serve as a guiding theory toEnglish-Chinese legal translation. Meanwhile, the limitations of the present study arepresented.