A Report On The Translation Of Chapter Four Of Law And Society

This paper is a translation report on the translation of the chapter of Legal Profession of the book of Law and Society which was written by Matthew Lipman, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. With a multidisciplinary and global approach to law and society, Law and Society offers a contemporary yet concise description of the structure and function of legal institutions, along with a lively discussion of both criminal and civil law, as well as basic legal doctrine. Unlike comparable books on law and society available today, Matthew Lipman takes an interdisciplinary approach to integrate distinctive coverage of diversity, inequality, and globalism through an organized theme in a strong narrative. This practical and cohesive text provides readers with a better understanding of how laws change society and the impact society has on the law.The translation of the book of Law and Society was commissioned by China's Procuratorial Press. The publication of the Chinese version of the book can help us to learn from the merits of the laws of other countries, thus enhancing the legal construction and the rule of law of China. The report analyzes the translation methods used in the 25 typical examples selected from the 10000 words of Chapter 4 of Law and Society from the perspective of skopos theory.This report falls into four parts which are task description, translation process, case analysis and translation summary. The part of task description describes the commissioner's requirements, the introduction of the author, the characteristics of the book of Law and Society, and the significance of its translation. The first section of translation process is the preparations for translation which discusses the preparation of translation tools, Vermeer's skopos theory and its three rules, the choice of translation strategy and the making of translation plan; The second section of translation process discusses the analysis and polishing of the first translated manuscript and exhaustively explores the mistakes and misunderstanding caused by the translator's limited knowledge, the difficult to understand the source text and the misunderstanding of the source text; The third section of translation process discusses the analysis and polishing of the second translated manuscript and thoroughly explores the stylistic and rhetorical analysis and polishing of the second draft; The third section of translation process discusses the analysis and polishing of the final translation.The part of case analysis first discusses the feasibility of skopos theory in the analysis of the rendition and then under the guidance of skopos theory analyzes the twenty-five typical examples of translation from the aspects of words translation, sentence translation, metaphor translation and modification and elimination translation. Through the analysis of the twenty-five case examples, the report holds that the translation strategy, methods, and techniques employed by the translator help to achieve the purpose of the translation project, which conforms to skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule respectively.The last part of the report discusses the translation of the words of legal English, that of complex sentences and that of sentences with ideological meanings, which serve as the problems in the translation project, and explores the solutions to these problems; Then the last part analyzes the enlightening lesson from this translation project and holds that translation calls for a careful consultation of reference books and dictionaries, a polishing of translated manuscript, a team work, and a lifelong hard study of Chinese language.