Studies On Chinese Translation Of Russian Legal Texts

Russian legal text is characterized by its linguistic stylization. On the one hand, its style manifests the characteristics of accuracy and rigor, solemnness and authoritativeness, simplicity and conciseness, and conservatism and stability. On the other hand, it has notable characteristics on both lexical and syntactic levels.Legal document translation is the medium of international legal communication, which is of great importance in practice. Taking the stylistic characteristics and linguistic features of Russian legal text into consideration and based on such translation theories as "Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance,’"Three Principles," and "Functional Equivalence," this thesis explores the Chinese translation of Russian legal text from different perspectives, combines the advantages of different translation schools, and proposes the translation standard of "loyalty and accuracy, fluency and coherence, and static equivalence" and the translation principle of "faithfulness and accuracy, clarity and conciseness, consistency and coherence, and specification of language," and macroscopically analyzes different translation strategies.Legal translation is a process not only of language conversion, but also of legal culture transmission. Therefore, translator should have a good knowledge of the differences between Chinese and Russian legal cultures in their origins, ethics, religiosities, people-foremost values, and humanist views.Different from other texts, the solemnness and authoritativeness of legal text require no artistic recreation in its translation but merely loyal representation of the original text, so that the reader will be affected by the same legal binding force and legal enforcement as the original text. Based on this, this thesis discusses and analyzes the applicability of literal translation and liberal translation and inquires into seven specific translation methods which are paginal translation, amplification, omission, conversion, adaptive translation, splitting, and combination. Furthermore, this thesis studies the problems in Russian legal translation, namely, ellipsis, amplification, word by word translation, mistranslation of legal terms, insufficient legal knowledge, and improper styles.The study of legal document translation not only enriches the system of translation theories, but also is of critical importance to the fostering of competent translators for legal document.