Application Of Register Theory In Legal Translation Studies

As one of the most important theories in systematic functional linguistics, Register theory explores the relationship between cultural background, context, discourse, lexicon and grammar. It focuses on the decisive role of context and its influence on language use. The Field, Tenor and Mode of a particular Discourse, jointly make up its register peculiarities and hence create its unique stylistic features. It has been widely applied in many fields. In particular, the application of register theory in translation can be of great relevance in the translators’decision-making processes.The translation of China’s laws and regulations has long been deemed as an important part of China’s foreign legal communication, foreign trade, and cultural exchange. However, the achievements obtained so far in this field are far from satisfactory, especially when the quality of the translations is concerned. To meet WTO’s transparency requirements that all membership states must have their corresponding laws, regulations, and policies and measures available in at least one of the three WTO official languages (namely English, French or Spanish), China put in great effort and enormous resources, leading in a booming market of legal transition. As a result, a vast quantity of legal documents have been translated in foreign languages. However, their qualities bring much concern. Despite of the fact that scholars have widely explored the theories, principles, and methods of legal translation in recent decades, more systematic studies are still urgently needed to yield reliable quality assessment systems and effective guidelines for the translators. Given that economic laws typically have direct impacts on the social economic order of a society as well as on each individual person, special attentions are needed in their translation. For this reason, relevant study is necessary to improve the quality of Chinese-to-English translation and quicken the pace of document translation.This paper, on basis of a case study about two English versions of the Companies Laws of People’s Republic of China (2005Revision), aims to apply Register theory to translation of legal documents. Two English versions come from the official website of National People’s Congress (NPC) and lawinfochina.com. This topic not only broadens the research field of Register, but also makes up the shortcomings of researches in legal translation. Its theoretical meaning includes exploring the way of legal Chinese-English translation and seeking for a new perspective for similar researches; its practical meaning lies in improvement of the two English versions, promotion of cross-cultural communication and providing possible inspiration for legal translation in the future. Merits as well as problems exist in the two versions when they are examined against the norms and criteria of the theory. Two selected versions can be improved by avoiding grammatical errors, misuse of modal verbs and misunderstanding of the original. Translators need to highly value legal Chinese-English translation and make efforts to improve translation quality.