A Report On The Translation Of SZRMQ V Minister For Immigration And Border Protection ([2013] FCAFC 142)

This thesis is a report on the translation of an Australian judgment on an appellate case arising from the quality of interpreting services.Interpreting quality is of great importance for maintaining judicial fairness.With the expansion of foreign exchanges,China has witnessed a rapid growth of foreign-related cases and thus the standardization of the interpreting quality is deeply in need.Therefore,the translation of cases in relation to interpreting quality will facilitate the construction of a society with rules of law.On the basis of text typology,the report analyzes the property and character of the judgment,i.e.primarily descriptive but also prescriptive.Hence,legal equivalence is adopted so as to ensure the faithful expression of legal concepts,thus highlighting the prescriptive nature of judgments.Besides,the correct translation of trans-cultural contents is guaranteed with the reference to the three principles in legal exchanges(Du,2005)and pragmatic equivalence so as to conform to the descriptive property of judgments.During the process of the translation,the author finds the judgment has special features in terms of the selection of lexical items and the choices of sentence patterns.Therefore,the analyses at lexical and syntax levels of the translation practice are mainly demonstrated in the case study.At the lexical level,the author conducts analysis of the translation of six types of words and expressions,namely the translation of modal verbs,legal vocabulary,perspective-articulating expressions,formal expressions,honorifics and pronouns;At the syntax level,the author analyzes the translation of courtroom orders,complex sentences and passive voice.Meanwhile,the author hopes to learn from the advancement of the cases in foreign countries and brings some enlightenment to the improvement of the status quo of domestic court interpreting or even legal translation at large.It is hoped that the findings and conclusions in this report,if possible,could shed some light on legal translation.