Cross-cultural Translation Methods Of E-C Translation Of Penal Code And Legal News In The Late Qing Dynasty

In the first half of 19^th century, varies of Chinese and English newspapers and periodicals were established by western missionaries in Canton, Hong Kong, Macao,in order to expand their religious, commercial and political ideas. The Chinese Repository is one of them, which recorded in detail China's politics, economy, laws,culture, religion and social life before and after the First Opium War, among which Chinese Penal Code and legal news took a large part. As it had been quoted and referred to by many scholars in western countries to learn about China, translating this part boosts great documentation value for Chinese scholars and history learners.The texts of penal codes are mainly presented in Volume 2, Volume 4 and Volume 6, with some related passages showed in Volume 7 to Volume 20. The main content concerns articles of Penal Codes of China, torture instruments, execution of punishment, introduction of prisons in Guangzhou and legal cases news reports, etc.,in which cultural-loaded words, English-style ‘Pinyin', legal words and objects of the Qing Dynasty were concerned, and was influenced by varies cultural elements of both the country of source text and the country of target text, such as legal culture, political culture and culture of torture instruments, departments and official positions in ancient China and western countries, etc.The author studied the translated text of these legal materials from the perspective of cultural factors with theoretical basis of the Relevance Theory in order to make most of information effectively from the translation and maintain the features of legal texts of ancient China. In order to give better translation, the author did some supplement study, made free translation, added some notes and gave precise meaning as the translation to make compensation for cultural defaults.The Chinese version of this periodical has not been published, which stopped many Chinese scholars from getting information from it. So the author sincerely hopes that the translated version of Chinese ancient laws in Chinese Repository will give Chinese people a hand in learning Chinese history and ancient laws.