Translation Report Of Conditional Sentences In Legislative Texts

Legal rules are the most important contents of the legislative text.Legal rules are often expressed by conditional sentences.Conditional sentences are also a difficult point in this translation task.Studying the logical structure of legal rules and the composition of conditional sentences is the basis for the successful translation of conditional sentences.On the one hand,the logical structure of legal rules is regular.According to the latest study,a legal rule is generally divided into two parts: conditions and legal results.Conditions refer to facts or conditions that lead to certain legal results;legal results are the result of certain legal facts or conditions.On the other hand,the English sentence patterns of legal rules have certain rules.In the English legislative text,the part of legal results,usually regarded as the core of the legal rule,is generally expressed in the main clause;the conditional part is generally expressed in subordinate clauses or similar components.This report establishes a Four-step Translation Method on the basis of the features of the conditional sentences in the legislative texts and the translation theories of Eugene A.Nida's back-transformation translation theory,J.C.Catford's translation shift theory,and Alexander Fraser Tytler's three principles of translation.The novelty of the method lies in the fact that it combines the traditional translation theories with the characteristics of the legislative text,and formulates a specific solution for the translation of conditional sentences in the legislative text.The method is unique and practical.By this method the translator can quickly and accurately recognize the sentence structure and grasp the meaning of the source text,and then translate it into a logically clear and professional target text.The translation practice of the source text in this report shows that Four-step Translation Method can effectively solve the problem of translation of conditional sentences in legislative texts.The steps in Four-step Translation Method are as follows:Step 1: Segmentation.First,on the basis of analyzing the sentence,the whole sentence is divided into two parts: the conditions and the legal results.The content of the conditions and the content of the legal results are generally distinct,but in English writing,sometimes thetwo parts maybe cross each other and translators need to discriminate them.The segmentation of the sentence in step1 lays the foundation for further analysis and transfer.Step 2: Back-transformation.The second step is to break the surface structure of the original text,go down the kernel sentences of the original text,and enter the deep structure of the language to prepare for the transfer of meaning in the next step.There may be huge differences in the surface structure between different languages,but there are more similarities in the deep structure.Meaning transfer is easier to be carried out on the level of deep structures of the two languages.The order of back-transformation process is: first write the kernel sentences of the part of legal results,and then write the kernel sentences of the part of conditions.Step3: Forward-transformation.The purpose of the third step is to transfer the deep structure of the original text to the surface structure of the target language.Specifically,the kernel sentences of the original text are directly transferred into the surface structure of the target language.By this transformation,the meaning transfer between the two languages has been achieved.Due to the huge difference in the surface structures between English and Chinese,level shifts and category shifts are inevitable in the forward-transformation process.The first draft of the target text is produced in this step.Step 4: Restructuring.The purpose of the fourth step is to improve the first draft.First,check whether the meaning of the translation text is complete,and whether the legal rule in the target text is clear,because in legal translation,transferring the meaning of the original text should be put on the first priority.Second,check whether the words,sentence structure and style of the target text conform to the Chinese habits.Third,check whether the target text is fluent.After the restructuring and improving of the target text,the final translation version is produced in the fourth step.This paper consists of five parts.Part1 is a description of the translation task,including the reasons for the selection of the source text,the syntactical features of the source text and the difficulty in translation.Part2 describes the translation process,including translation schedule,pre-translation preparation,performance of translation,and post-translation management.Part3 is the construction of the Four-step Translation Method,including thebackground of the Four-step Translation Method,the definition of the Four-step Translation Method,the description of the Four-step Translation Method,and the theoretical basis of the Four-step Translation Method.Part4 is the translation case analyses.By analyzing and translating three typical conditional sentences,namely “where-conditional sentence”,“if-conditional sentence” and “unless-conditional sentence”,the author shows how Four-step Translation Method is operated in translating legislative texts.Part5 is the conclusion,summarizing the main findings and explaining the limitations of this report.Through this translation project,on the one hand,the author hopes to improve his translation skills of legislative texts;on the other hand,he hopes to provide some advice for other translators who engage in translating legislative texts.