A Chinese Translation Of The Jury System Of Queensland,Australia,and A Report On The Translation

The translation of legal texts is professional and practical,but difficult due to the complexity in expressions and textual structures.With more frequent exchange between China's and western legal systems,the jury system has been introduced into China long before.However,there are few translated works and there exist some mistranslations such as“???" for "jury".This thesis is a translation report based on the translation practice of a text themed "the jury service" which is extracted from the court website of Queensland,Australia.The translation adopts a series of new translations initiated or proposed by Hu Zhaoyun such as "???" for "jury".This thesis discusses the text types and functions of the source text which is identified as an informative legal text with the intention of the introduction of foreign legal system.The thesis takes the semantic and communicative translation proposed by Peter Newmark as a framework and then probes into the strategies and techniques applied to transmit information via expressions in lexical and syntactical levels.This thesis elaborates the pre-translation procedures,including the analysis of the translation aim,study on translation subject,analysis of the source text,parallel text reading,and glossary preparation.The while-translating process and after-translation analysis show that the translation of informative legal text should apply semantic translation as the major strategy and communicative translation as a supplementary one to guide the choice of techniques in lexical,phrasal and syntactical levels.Techniques used in lexical level include the unification of terminology,adoption of new translations,double check of the translation of proper names,semantic and structural addition,and correct translation of modal verbs;In phrasal level,such techniques as conversion of nominalised and prepositional phrases,and of part of speech,are used;For syntactical level,direct translation,conversion of clauses and sentence members are employed.Meanwhile,the source text is made up by several forms of text,including handbooks,regulations and different titles,for which semantic translation works to transfer the meaning faithfully while communicative translation plays its alternative role to make the target version smoother.Conclusion is drawn that the whole translation for an informative foreign legal system should be guided by semantic translation with the help of communicative translation,and the translator follows the guidance to choose appropriate techniques in lexical and syntactical levels so as to achieve the equivalence of informative function in textual level.This thesis is a practice and an attempt,hoping to further define the text type and apply appropriate techniques in legal text translation guided by strategies.