A Study Of The Legal Translationinthe Euunder The Multilingual Environment

One of the most vital factors that impact the languages of the EUlegislation is multilingualism,which means all the official languages enjoys mandatory equal treatment,aiming at giving citizens access to community legislation and information in their native languages.Legal translationin the EU,an administrative taskor a daily work of legal translators,and lawyer linguists and interpreters who work in the official centers of European administration,is one of the cornerstones of the EU activities and represents a real link between the EU institutions and the citizens of Member States.Only severalscholars have explored the problems of legal translation in the multilingual environment,especially in a situation of quick enlargement of the EU in recent years;therefore,it is necessary to analyze the characteristics of legal translation in the EU,and explore how multilingual policy affects the EU translation system and corresponding translation system and the translation practice.So the present studyis intend to explore how the multicultural environment of the EU affects its legal translation,expound on the positive contribution of translation quality on translation practice,and analyze the challenges raised and to be raised by legal translation of legislative texts in the EU context.This objective goes hand in hand with the importance of the adequate legislative texts(French and English versions)and the proper linguistic analysis of the EU language.To maintain said objective,this thesissheds light on the new trend of the legal translation in theEU under multilingual environment,by means of touching on both the theoretical aspects(i.e.,the characteristic of the EU languages,the main principles governing the choices of legal terms,and various constraints in translation practice)and the practical issues(i.e.,how this multilingual legal translation actually works in the EU,the role of legal linguist,andthe interaction between legal languages of member states and the EU language,and the impact of the EU legal translation on the legal practice in China,etc.).The thesis firstly gives a brief introduction to the “new EU language”phenomenon in theEU,illustrates the creative aspect of legal translation under the language equality policy,the variations of EU lexicon,the advanced terminology database and the use of concordance of 23 languages between different language versions,in the section that follows,the author compares the legal translation between the Member States and the EU to figure out the differences of legal translation principles employed by the Member States and the EU;Further,it explores the translation practice in the future with the enlargement of EU.The survey revels that,according to the EU multilingual policy,although all officiallanguages are equal,but some scholars believe that somelegal texts for other languages are not translation,instead,they aremore inclined to “co-drafting”.In general terms,legal translation in the EU not only needs a specific context and purpose,but also relates to the EU language equality Policy and the EU judicial practice.When Faced with the condition where the original texts and translation texts are dynamic,the number of Member States is continuing to expand,and the language type is increasing,the legal translation of the EU is surely to represent an innovation trend in legal translation,thus legal translation will be endowed with a new meaning.This thesis not only reveals the creativity aspects of legal translation in the EU and suggests appropriate translation strategies under EU enlargement in the future,but also brings some enlightenment to China multilingual legal translation under the development of globalization.