A Report On English-chinese Translation Practice Of An International Legal Text

With the accelerating pace of China’s reform and opening up,it has been agreed that great importance should be attached to international communications and cooperation in economy, politics, academy and culture. The translation of foreign legislative documents and legal scholarly works is an example of exchange in these fields between China and foreign countries. Though legal translation enjoys a long history, there is difficulty hindering the translation of it due to the peculiar features of legal language and the differences between the English and the Chinese language. The study on the translation of legal texts is thus of great necessity. From her translation experience, the author has realized that legal translators should not only have a good command of the English and Chinese languages but also acquire some basic knowledge of law.Text typology, which is put forward by Reiss, is an important translation theory and has positive impact on the analysis and assessment of translation. Reiss considers that the classification of text types is necessary to guide the translation practice for texts of different categories differ a lot. Based on the classification of functions of language, she distinguishes three types of texts: the informative text, the expressive text and the operative text. The translation criteria and methods of the three types of text are also offered. In translating the informative text, the most important thing is to keep the main content of the source text. In the translation of the expressive text, the translated text should try to express the feeling and emotion of the source text. And as for the translation of the operative text, the translated text that has achieved the similar effect as the source text is considered to be a good translation. The theory of text typology does not apply a single translation method instead it is of the opinion that separate translation methods should be applied to different types of text. It is vital to apply the theory of text typology to legal text, which is a special and professional text.The material for translation is selected from the book — Dispute Settlement in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, written by Natalie Klein. It talks about dispute settlement procedure in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, how the dispute settlement system will apply and operate in practice with respect to the freedom of navigation, the protection of marine resources, etc. The thesis seeks to apply text typology to the translation of international legal text by analyzing some examples from the selected translation. The author suggests the relevant translation methods for terms used as designations, legal pairs, legal terms of art, long and complex sentences and passive voice and nominalized structure. The author hopes the study will benefit those who intend to be professional legal translators and who want to improve their legal translation skills.