The C-E Translation Report Of Legal Text Guided By Text Typology

With the increasingly frequent global communication, people’s need for legal translation is also increasing. Although some domestic translators begin to translate Chinese laws in recent years, most of the translations are legal texts of national laws and regulations, while due attention has not been paid to the translation of legal texts issued by local governments. This paper reports the writer’s experience on the translation of two local regulations recently issued in Hebei province, which are Measures of Hebei Province on Protection of the Rights and Interests of Rural Migrant Workers and Procedures of Hebei Province on Prosecution of Fault Liability in Administrative Law Enforcement. By using text typology, this report explores the characteristics of legal texts and the methods used in the writer’s translation. Based on the writer’s translation experience, the report wishes to shed some light on the English translation of the two laws for the foreigners, which has a practical significance.According to the theory of text typology, the translator firstly confirms the two legal text types, which are both prescriptive legal text of informative texts. On this basis, the translator analyzes the five translation principles of prescriptive legal text, and illustrates with specific cases the guiding function of these translation principles in legal translation. Secondly, the translator summarizes two translation difficulties in the translation of prescriptive English legal texts:lexis and grammar, including:the use of the archaic words, the use of French, the use of the terms, the translation of active and passive voice, the translation of long sentence and so on. Thirdly, the translator anatomizes and analyzes the translator how to apply these language features and how to select the specific legal vocabularies in the process of translating the two laws.The translator summarizes some experience in this translation practice. First, the confirmation of text type and the analysis of the text type characteristics has an important function on the later translation.Second, when translating prescriptive legal text, the translator should strictly follow the principles of faithfulness and precision, consistency and identity, clarity and conciseness, professionalism and standardized language, and make sure the translation conform to English legal language features to guarantee the completeness, accuracy and rigor of legal text.