A Syste Mic Functional Linguistics Approach To Legal English Translation

In the era of globalization,multilingual communication has been on the upswing in global exchange.The flow of population with various languages,cultures and belief systems triggers the elimination of barriers in multilingual communication across the globe,rendering translation an increasingly common human condition.However,due to the diversity of culture,history and society,the enormous volume of translation poses great problems for translators.Legal translation is inherent with difficulties in terms of terminology,style and jurisdiction,making it more challenging to get over the hurdles.The translation of legal discourse,as a dual operational process of legal and inter-lingual transfer,is largely affected by communicative factors under the mechanisms of law in multilingual jurisdictions.The socio-linguistically and contextually-oriented framework of systemic functional linguistics(SFL)theory,which concerns itself with how language works,how it is organized,and what social functions it serves,offers valid guidelines for the research on legal translation.Within the structure of SFL,the thesis attempts to create a framework of legal translation quality assessment which consists of both top-down analysis at the macro level and bottom-up analysis at the micro level(lexico-grammar – metafunctions – register – context of situation – context of culture).The framework is composed of the analysis of lexico-grammar of the source legal discourse,the meaning realized by lexico-grammar,and the legal situational and cultural elements.To evaluate the validity of the model,a comparison of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods(CISG)and its official Chinese translation is utilized for exemplification with the discourse's transitivity,modality and conjunctive cohesion systems analyzed in quantitative and qualitative manners.The thesis attempts to inherit and develop SFL theory and models for legal translation quality assessment by constructing a functional framework which is comprehensive and applicable.