Text Typology And Legal Text Translation

With the rapid development of China in recent years, more and more foreign trades are initiated by China. Because many relevant legal texts are drafted in Chinese, the Chinese-English translation of legal text has become more and more important. This essay takes the legal text Provisions on the Establishment and Operation of Joint Venture in Special Economic Zone as the object of study. It belongs to economic legal text, which has a formal literary form and uses precise words. The author aims to make the translation play the same role in the target language country, which would make the enterprise overseas clearly know the provisions that shall be obeyed in order to establish the joint venture.Text typology proposed by Peter Newmark is mainly consisted of the expressive text, the informative text and the vocative text. According to the classification, this text belongs to the informative text, which also possesses the characteristics of the vocative text. By comparing the stylistic features of the Chinese and English legal texts, the author tries to analyze and summarize the strategies adopted during the translation of the legal text from three aspects, known as the whole organization, sentence pattern and the choice of words.The first chapter introduces the purpose and significance of the legal text translation and summarizes the past study. Moreover, it also clarifies text typology and introduces the related past researches. The second chapter compares the characteristics of the Chinese and English legal texts and analyzes the similarities and differences. The third chapter summarizes the principles that should be followed during legal text translation. The fourth chapter argues for the translation strategies that have been adopted under the guidance of text typology. The fifth chapter summarizes the experience acquired from this translation practice, which may be helpful when dealing with legal text translation in the future.