Report On The Translation Of R V. DEREK WILLIAM BENTEY (Deceased) [1998]

Recent years have seen the comprehensive judicial reform in China.China has learned the advanced judicial culture from others,and made remarkable progress in this respect,which can be exemplified by the quashing of many miscarriages of justice.China's translation works have played an important role in the judicial exchanges,but all those efforts have been focused on translating laws and regulations and other legal materials.Thus,judgment translation has a large room for improvement.Nothing other than judgments can better reflect judicial culture and point the way of legislation.Therefore,more importance should be attached to the translation of judgments.The report analyses the translation of a famous wrongful conviction in the UK—— R.V.BENTLEY(1998)from discourse,syntactical and lexical levels.Based on Susan Sarcevic's theory of legal equivalence it explores the difficulties in the translation task,such as how to solve the different stylistic features,syntactical ambiguity and gap of legal terms in different legal systems.The report concludes that loyalty is the top priority in the judgment translation.For the purpose of conveying the original meaning of the ST,the TT should be loyal to the function and style of the ST,so as to achieve legal equivalence.Through comparing the differences between England and Chinese judgments,the report has helped Chinese legal practitioners to see how the England judicial authority did justice.Besides,it has provided valuable references to China's judgment translation and promoted China's judicial exchanges with the outside world.