A Contrastive Study Of Three English Versions Of The General Civil Law Of PRC

With the continuous development of China’s foreign economy and trade, legal translation, to some extent, has become an important medium of international communication. On the one hand, we need to learn the experiences and technologies from foreign legislative laws; on the other hand, we also need to introduce our legislative laws to the world, to help foreign government agencies, organizations and individuals to learn Chinese law comprehensively and accurately and provide a legal basis for investment, trade, litigation and arbitration in China. The General Civil Law of PRC, a basic civil legal norms in civil activities, is one of the most influential laws, for it is relevant to the vital interests of everyone involved. Therefore, their quality is of vital importance to its accurate understanding and full implementation by foreigners. In view of this, the author makes a contrastive study of the three English versions of the General Civil Law of PRC by adopting the contrastive and qualitative methods.Legal translation is a communicative activity across the legal culture and legal language. According to the characteristics of English translation of law, the thesis puts forward three translation criteria, namely, accuracy in meaning, appropriacy in style and naturalness in expression. Under each criterion, the thesis presents many translation techniques. "Accuracy in meaning" criterion requires that a legal translation should be faithful to original message. And any unreasonable omission, unnecessary addition, misrepresentation and ambiguities should be avoided. Correct translating legal terms and modal verbs; "Appropriacy in style" criterion requires that a legal translation should be formal and precise enough, using formal words, archaic words and borrowed words, sufficiently careful in selecting words, especially in distinguishing synonymous words as well as false lexical counterparts;"Naturalness in expression "criterion requires that a legal translation should comply with the principles of conciseness, readability and consistency. Effective means to achieve conciseness include eliminating semantic repetition, using pro-forms and simplifying construction, while the readability of a translation can be improved with the help of addition, transformation of voices, and rearrangement of sentence structures. As for consistency, it especially stressed to be consistent in the aspects of terms, grammars as well as parallel structures.Three English versions of the General Civil Law of PRC are chosen in this thesis, including the English version of Legislative Affairs Bureau of the State Council of PRC, the English version of Australia CCH Co., Ltd. and the English version of China Law Reporter of American Journal. Based on the three translation criteria, the thesis makes an evaluation of the three English versions by pointing out their merits and demerits, and meanwhile concludes some reasons for their demerits. At the same time, some translation techniques and suggestions are put forward.