Translation Of Lexical Gap In Legislative Texts

Translation is a cross-cultural communicative process. It is obvious that each country hasits own specificity with its cultural, political, social and historical events, which leads to thephenomenon that no single word exists in a language to denote a particular concept. Thisphenomenon is the lexical gap. Similarly, owing to the differences of legal culture, legalsystem and legal tradition, there exist a lot of lexical gap in translating legal texts.This is a translation report on lexical gap. In translating of the Family LawAct-Government of Prince Edward Island, the translator makes an intensive study of thelexical gaps and explores their translation methods. First, this paper gives the definition oflexical gap. Secondly, this paper mainly talks about the reasons for causing the phenomenonof lexical gaps and presents some methods for their translation:(1) literal translation;(2)paraphrase;(3) free translation (4) substitution and annotation. Finally, the translatorsummarizes some lessons and experiences learned in this translation.