Subjectivity In Legislative Text Translation

This thesis is a comparative case study on the subjectivity in legislative texttranslation, with all its linguistic data excerpted from Labor Contract Law of the PRCand its three English translations. Based on the information structure of legaldiscourse, the present research aims to investigate the major manifestations, as well asthe influential factors, of translators’ subjectivity in the Chinese-English translation oflegislative texts. It also explores to what extent such subjectivity is acceptable inlegislative text translation from the perspective of information equivalence.According to the information structure of legal discourse, every legal discoursehas its kernel proposition, which embraces, to the largest extent,15information knotsthat can represent the whole information of the discourse. These information knotssymbolize the relationship between information units, which consist of propositionand can be further analyzed into smaller information elements. Through comparativeanalyses of the ST and TT, the present study identifies four major forms ofmanifestations of legal translators’ subjectivity at the information plane: informationloss, information addition, information reordering, and information substitution.Moreover, manifestations of such subjectivity at language plane are categorized underthree headings: in the lexical, syntactical and textual aspects. Through comparativeanalyses, the paper concludes that language conventions and ideologies are theprimary factors that affect legal translator’s subjectivity. To ensure that the display ofsubjectivity will not endanger the nature of legal translation or become a pretext ofmistranslation, the present paper proposes the principle of information equivalence tobe the assessing yardstick of the properness and desirability of subjectivity.In a nutshell, the present research is hoped to serve as a constructive work in C-Elegislative text translation and offer some references to future studies, particularly thequality assessment, of legislative text translation.