Cultural Compensation In E-C Translation Of Legal Terminology: A Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Since Friedman in1969firstly put forward the concept of legalculture in his article “Legal Culture and Social Development”, legaltranslation has given his translators a stiff and significant mission,namely, taking cultural influence into consideration in legal translation.Despite the more cultural similarities, undeniable cultural default setsmany barriers for legal translators. Relevance theory put forward bySperber&Wilson in1986, especially its advancement by their student,Ernest Gutt, afterwards, considers translation as a dynamic process ofcommunication, takes context into consideration, of course includingcultural context, and encourages the translator to seek the optimalrelevance in order for succes sful translation.This thesis aims to analyze the cultural default in E-C legalterminology translation from the perspective of relevance theory andexplore cultural compensation strategies by making use of therelevance-theoretical translation doctrine of Mr. Gutt. The present endeavor, firstly, illustrates the applicability of relevance theory in legaltranslation and the cultural default, then, analyzes the causes of culturaldefault (which is classified into complete default and incomplete default)based on the Model Penal Code by the American Law Institute in1962,and finally offers some cultural compensation strategies for E-C legalterminology translation through observing typical terminology culturaldefault instances from the angle of relevance theory.This paper tends to demonstrate the value of relevance theory indetermining cultural default in legal translation and its applicability forguiding the law translator to improve and perfect his work. On the onehand, relevance may constitute the theoretical support for such culturaldefault compensation strategies like literal translation, annotation andneologism; on the other hand, the principle of relevance, moreimportantly, requires the translator to give full play to his subjectivityand initiative in translation practice and to choose the best compensationapproach in certain circumstance, provided that he could achievemaximal contextual effects at minimal processing efforts of the audience while ensuring the optimal relevance and the informative assumptions ofthe source author to meet the cognitive expectation of the targetaudience.