A Tentative Approach To The Translation Of English Legislative Texts From The Perspective Of Register Analysis

Register is an important concept in Systemic Functional Linguistics, which canbe simply defined as a functional variety of language according to use. It isconstituted by three contextual variables, namely, field, tenor and mode. Field isconcerned with the topic or the content of activities, i.e. what is going on; tenorrefers to the role-relationship between interactants, focusing on who is taking part;and mode refers to the role that the language is playing in the interactive process.In translation, the equivalence between the source text and target text cannot beconfined to the formal correspondence in lexicon and grammar. More important,they should achieve the functional equivalence in register.By conducting the register analysis of English legislative texts, this thesis findsthat the English legislative text has a technical field with material processes andrelational possesses dominating the legislative text, formal tenor with unequal powerand modulation, written mode with extensive use of nominalization and highlyinternal cohesion. On the basis of these register features, the thesis comes up withthree principles the translator should conform to in translating English legislativetexts, namely, precision, authority and formality. Furthermore, this thesisdemonstrates the guidance of register for translators on lexical choices, style andthematic selection in the target text, and presents the application of register theory inthe translation of English legislative texts, with examples selected from typicalEnglish legislative texts.Therefore, this thesis suggests that legal translators should pay more attention tothe register features of the source text so that they can restore the same registers intarget text. And register equivalence should be taken into consideration when itcomes to the evaluation of translation quality.