| With the economic development and the diversification of social life,the law is expected to play a bigger role in maintaining social and economic order and coordinating the relations between citizens,communities and the nation.But many legal gaps and loopholes in China Mainland are yet to be closed and the public's trust and confidence in and the independence of the judiciary are yet to be improved.Legislative and judicial practice of other countries and regions could be of great reference.With the distinctive historical and cultural differences between China Mainland and countries (regions) of the common law system standing in the way of mutual learning,Hong Kong,with a legal system profoundly influenced by British law,a special bilingual environment and its close links with China Mainland,stands out as a perfect bridge for China Mainland to understand and learn from British law.The translation of English legal instruments,especially judgments,is of great significance in safeguarding the rights of the parties involved who speak Chinese instead of English,in facilitating public access and academic research as well as building a case law database for the reference of local Hong Kong and China Mainland.Therefore,the author selects an untranslated civil judgment form the Court of Final Appeal of HKSAR--Big Island Construction(HK)Ltd and Wu Yi Development Co Ltd & Anor as the source text for this translation task.When analyzing and translating the source text,the author finds that the judgment possesses the general characteristics of legal texts,e.g.frequent use of formal and solemn expressions,Latin words,common words with uncommon meanings and complex sentences.And in order to make the task a success,the translator needs to know enough about the common law system and the legal language habits of HKSAR,which is exactly the difficulties here and requires the translator's continual study and lots of searching before and during the translation.This report can be divided into two parts.The first part is to use CAT tools SDL Trados 2011 to translate the judgment,taking other English judgments and their official traditional Chinese translations from Hong Kong Legal Information Institute(HKLII)as parallel texts and the wording and language style of the said translations as reference.The second part deals with the obstacles of words and sentences and the author's way of solving them during the translation.It can be concluded that the translator must not take the terms in the judgment for granted and shall consider the meanings of terms in their specific context to avoid omission and misinterpretation.An idiomatic translation reflecting the legal language habit of Hong Kong should be pursued,for which the established Chinese translations of English legal terms in Hong Kong should be followed.The translator also needs to grasp the meanings and the structures of the sentences in the source text,make adjustments when necessary and ponder the Chinese translation again and again in an effort to deliver the information of the source text faithfully and reproduces its language style.Through the English-traditional Chinese translation of the judgment,the author hopes personally to learn more about the legal system of Hong Kong,gather experience in the translation of legal texts and create a legal translation memory for further use,and at the same time to facilitate the learning of China Mainland from legislative and judicial practice in Hong Kong,and last but not least,to provide reference for translators working at similar tasks. |
PDF Full Text Request