Analysis Of English Translation Of Legal Terms In The Criminal Law Of The People's Republic Of China Based On Functional Equivalence Theory

With China's opening-up and ever-closer international exchange,translating China's laws and regulations into English becomes an essential channel for foreigners to understand China's social and business environment.Under the guidance of the National People's Congress,translation of Chinese laws and regulations have achieved significant results.However,problems like inaccuracies or inconsistencies do occur.Although in practice the English versions of Chinese laws are not legally binding,they are the major sources of information for foreigners and reflect the development in China's legislation.Therefore,it is important to study the translation of China's laws and improve legal translation.Under such circumstances,the author conducts a case-based qualitative study using functional equivalence theory proposed by Eugene A.Nida.This paper studies the case of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China and analyses deficiencies in the current English version's meaning and style from the lexical level.The author combines the translation theory with the translation practice and compares the wordings in the English translation with those in the Model Penal Code of United States of America,penal codes of United Kingdom and Hong Kong as well as their law school textbooks.In this paper,forty examples are selected and studied from three perspectives:meaning,style and expression.The author finds that there are many translation errors in the current translation and classifies these problems into different categories,like nuances of synonyms,inappropriate implications,loss or vagueness of meaning,improper register,excessive use of nouns,inconsistency of wording,redundant words or repetition and literal translation.After a case by case analysis,the author offers suggestions to both legal translators and authorities on selecting references and building an open and free database accessible to everyone as well as a regular revision mechanism.It is hoped that this study could provide some help to legal translators and scholars and shed some light on the improvement of China's legal translation.