Legal Term Translation In The Case Of People Of The State Of Michigan V.jack Kevorkian(2001)

With the fast pace of globalization,exchanges of legal culture among various countries has been increasing at a rapid rate.As we know,the world has two major legal systems: one is the common-law system and the other is the civil-law system.These two legal systems are different from each other as they are formed in accordance with specific cultures,histories and social values.And legal translation,an interdisciplinary field which combines law,translation and linguistics,acts as a bridge for communication of legal culture between China and Western countries.Therefore,when translating legal documents,translators should take into consideration a range of cultural differences between China and Western countries.In legal translation,legal term plays a vital role as the accuracy of the legal term determines the quality of the whole targeted text.This thesis,a report on the translation of a judgment relating to euthanasia,mainly analyzes the source text from the perspective of legal terms.In accordance with the congruency of legal concepts,the author divides legal terms into three categories: near equivalent,partial equivalent and non-equivalent.Translation strategies for different terms are studied in this thesis and conclusions are as made follows: In case of near equivalence,translators just need to find exact equivalents in the target language and come up with one-to-one correspondence.In case of partial equivalence,translators need to apply the theory of functional equivalence and find the closest functional equivalent,which means that the target text is as same as the source text in terms of its legal effect.In case of non-equivalence,translators can appropriately take their subjective initiative in translation and adopt such translation strategies as paraphrasing,neutralization and recreation.Legal translation,rather than a process of transcoding a message from one language into another,is an act of communication in the mechanism of law.Therefore,translators shall,under the guidance of functional equivalence,adopt proper translation strategies and methods on the basis of a full understanding of Chinese and English legal languages and legal systems.In other words,translators should actively but reasonably make innovations within the framework composed of law,language and culture.