On The Contextual Parameters For Translating Polysemous Legal Terms

As it is well known, context plays an important role in translation, and it is especially true with the translation of legal terms, polysemous ones in particular. Nevertheless, it remains unclear in which concrete ways context can help the translation of polysemous legal terms and what important factors may affect the recontextualization process and translating of polysemous legal terms. Also, there has not been any feasible context model for polysemous legal term translation, which can serve the needs of the actual translation practice. The present research attempts to address these problems.Based on an overview of the cognitive context theory, the present researcher describes the translation of polysemous legal terms as a cognitive process of recontextualization, in which translators make use of the most relevant contextual parameters to help choose appropriate term equivalents. The contextual parameters for legal term translation are concluded by analyzing bilingual legal translation examples. These contextual parameters actually refer to the linguistic information, terminological information as well as the social and cultural information about the term of study. Accordingly, the three types of contextual information correspond to three kinds of contexts, which are linguistic context, terminological context, and cultural context respectively.With the theoretical justification for the contextual parameters described, the researcher constructed a multi-level cognitive context model for translating polysemous legal terms. Specifically speaking, the multi-level cognitive context model consists of three closely-related levels of contexts:terminological context, linguistic context and cultural context. Terminological context as the core contextual parameter is indispensable for legal term translation. It guarantees the equivalent concept in the target term provided. Linguistic context as the basic contextual parameter is also of crucial importance and offers mainly textual information. For cultural context, it is a supplementary contextual parameter, which helps the translator decide on the more appropriate equivalent for a polysemous term. Although with different functions, these contextual parameters all contribute to the reconstruction of the cognitive context of a polysemous legal term.The findings of the present study may be of some value both theoretically and practically. Theoretically, the present study is an attempt to incorporate cognitive context theory into the research of legal translation. Practically, the present study is expected to draw legal translators’attention to a cognitive approach to the analysis of contextual parameters for translating polysemous legal terms. And the multi-level cognitive context model developed can provide hopefully feasible solutions to the problems concerning the translation of polysemous legal terms. Meantime, the present research can help bilingual lexicographers provide more comprehensive contextual information when translating a term in bilingual dictionaries.