| Legal documents referred to in this thesis mean those functionally prescriptive ones.Legal documents must be accurate and free of loopholes because they are closely related tothe rights and obligations of the parties concerned. In order to avoid misunderstandings andambiguities, an English sentence in a legal document usually contains a number ofmodifiers and clauses, resulting in lengthiness and complexity. Long English sentencesreferred to in this thesis mean English sentences with at least one clause, a number ofsupplementary elements and at least50words. A translator should follow the principle offunctional equivalence, identify situations, conditions, legal subjects and legal actions,visualize the structure of the English sentence and identify the logical and legalrelationships among the sentence elements; and then, the translator should bear in mind thedifferences in the patterns of English sentences and Chinese sentences and render thetranslation by restructuring information, adjusting element orders and manifesting theimplied logical relationships with conjuctions. As certain sentence patterns cause thelengthiness and complexity of English sentences in legal documents, a translator canimprove its translation speed and quality by familiarizing itself with the sentence patternsfrequently used in legal English documents and the corresponding translations. |
PDF Full Text Request