Enlightenment From The C-E Translation Of Company Law Of The People’s Republic Of China(CLPRC) On Website Invest In China

With the trend of economic globalization and China’s entry to WTO, more communication and cooperation have been carried on between China and other countries in the world in such field as politics, cultures, economy and law. As the communication grows in respect of legal business between China and other countries, we need to borrow experience from our peers and technique in overseas countries. On the other hand, we also need to introduce our legislation development to the world so as to bring China in line with the international customary practices and further strengthen democracy and the legal system and also perfect our socialist market economy. Therefore, the translation of legal document should be given priority.The English version of Company Law not only helps encourage legal exchange between China and other countries, but also helps foreign investors acquaint with China’s market economy system and modern enterprise system as well as the legal basis and legal guarantee for the company system so as to attract more investment from abroad and strengthen Sino-foreign cooperation in the economic field.Reiss puts forward, the type of text will influence the translator’s choice of translation strategies. Under the guidance of Reiss’s text typology, the thesis makes a primary research on the English version of Company Law. By analyzing the functional features of legal document in translation, the thesis points out that the legal documents belongs to the informative text. As a "content-focused" text, the informative text requires invariance in transfer of their content. The critic must above all ascertain whether their content and information is fully represented in the target language in translation.This thesis analyzes the English Version of the Company Law of the People’s Republic of China (CLPRC)on the Website Invest in China released by the Ministry of Commerce as well as compares with the English version with the one published by China Law Press(the Law Press Version). Overall, the English version of CLPRC under discussion, to some extent, retains the meaning and style, and reproduces the equal effect of the original Chinese Company Law. However, various problems emerges in the English version at the same time, the thesis tries to probe into the causes for the problems. The type of text will influence the translator’s choice of translation strategies. According to the functional features of legal documents, the thesis provides some strategies and methods, namely, foreignization-orientation and literal plus free translation so as to improve the translation quality.This thesis is divided into the following three chapters. Chapter One makes a thorough analysis of the English version of CLPRC with abundant examples. The content of this chapter mainly includes giving a general idea of the background of Company Law of the People’s Republic of China, the analysis of the linguistic and stylistic features, the principles in translation, the problems existing in the English version of CLPRC on the Invest in China Website and the cause’s analysis of the problems.Chapter Two discusses functional features of legal document in translation. In chapter two, functions of legal document are first discussed under the guidance of Reiss’s text typology. By analyzing, the author finds legal documents belong to informative texts. Then the thesis takes on the function features in legal documents translation. Three function features are referred in this thesis, namely, informative plus expressive, a given purpose, and specific translation brief.Under the guidance of Chapter One and Chapter Two, Chapter Three of this thesis is devoted to the discussion of the translation methods, strategies and practical translation techniques to achieve the legal effect in English system and provide practical suggestions for further research and translation practice under the guidance of translation principles of legal documents. Foreignization orientation strategy is mainly adopted because legal text is the "content-focused" text. The thesis points out that literal translation should be adopted as the primary method and free translation as the secondary or supplementary strategy in legal translation.Translation of legal documents is by no means an easy task. For improvement of legal translation, the legal translator should not only have a good knowledge of the source and target legal languages, but also a good command of the source and target legal texts, the legal translation brief, and the functional features of the legal texts.Despites the relatively systematic discussion was made above, there are many defects of this thesis, and efforts are needed for further improvement. The author of this thesis sincerely hopes that this thesis will be helpful for future legal translation practice.