A Study On Subjectivity Of The Translator In Legal Translation: Form The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Convinced that all legal translation has to be literal, lawyers and translators havegot a hoary practice to focus their attention merely on terminological issues arisingout of or pertaining to legal translation. And indeed most existing studies on legaltranslation have dealt primarily, even if not exclusively, with legal terminology. Andunfortunately, many of them are no more than exercises in contrastive linguistics, thusgiving the reader a false impression that legal translation is but a mechanic process oftrans-coding. However, it is lucky enough that under the influence of German scholars,the main emphasis in general translation theory has gradually shifted from language tothe cultural aspects of translation. And in fact, the law of a country or region iscertainly influenced by its culture just as Sarveic put,“Since a text derives itsmeaning from one or more legal system, legal translation is essentially a process oftranslating legal system”(Sarveic,1997:229). Vermeer’s skopos theory departs fromthe tradition by recognizing translations as such works in which the function of thetarget text differs from that of the source text. Pursuant to the skopos theory, the taskof translation is to produce a text that satisfies the cultural expectations of the targetreceivers for a text with that particular function, here the translator naturally will playan active role and need to fully display his initiative and creativity to fulfill the finalcommunicative purpose of the target translation. Skopos theory has its own specialadvantage in legal translation studies, based on which the translator’ subjectivity canbe revealed very well.Under skopos it’s necessary and reasonable for the translator displaying hersubjectivity in legal translation, and the translator plays as a decision-maker in legaltranslation, displaying her initiative and creativity through the whole translationprocess. However, her initiative and creativity are not unlimited: the translator isalways restrained by some objective or subjective factors such as the source text,translation capacity and competency of the translator himself and the expectation ofthe target reader.