A Report On The Translation Of The Law For The Regulation And Privatisation Of The Electricity And Related Water Sector

With more frequent communication with the world,especially the growing economic and trade ties with foreign countries,China demands more translation of laws and regulations.However,legal texts have unique characteristics and legal culture also varies from country to country,which makes it a huge challenge for translation.Thus,applicable theories are required to guide legal translation.This thesis report on the E-C translation of the Law for the Regulation and Privatisation of the Electricity and Related Water Sector of Sultan of Omanattempts to apply Catford's Translation Shifts to describe and analyze the process of translating legal texts.Catford defines Translation Shifts as the correspondence departure from formal in the process of going from source language to target language and divides it into level shifts and category shifts.Through analysis,it is found that shifts almost penetrate the whole translation project.In general,level shifts are applied to shifts between lexis and grammar.The three subtypes of category shifts,namely structure-shifts,class-shiftsand unit-shifts,are also used in the translation.More specifically,structure-shiftsmainly include changes of active voice and passive voice and changes of subject-prominent and topic-prominent structures.Class-shifts are used to change part of speech.Unit-shifts are suitable for shifts occurring in sentences,clauses,groups,words and morphemes.The use of multiple shifts makes the translation more fluent and the style closer to source texts.