A Report Of Translating The ADB Facility Agreement (Excerpt)

With China's ever more active engagement in the global economy,the number and variety of relevant legal documents have risen remarkably in recent years,for example,facility agreements.A facility agreement is a legal document signed between an enterprise and a financial institution in respect of a loan.On the basis of the task of translating from English to Chinese a part of a facility agreement entered into by and between the Asian Development Bank(ADB)and a company—the ADB Facility Agreement,this report is written to analyse with examples how the employed principles guide the process of translation and summarize the employed translation strategies.The task of translating the ADB Facility Agreement required good teamwork,with each member of the team responsible for translating one part of the document,and with two of the members as proof-readers and coordinators.Any problem arising out of the task was discussed and solved with joint effort.Problems arose during translation in terms of the reproduction in the target text of nominalizations,financial jargons,juxtaposed synonyms,and simple sentences listed in several paragraphs.The following principles were employed: functional equivalence,near or partial equivalence,and the four fundamental principles in legal translation: 1)accuracy and preciseness;2)consistency and identity;3)clarity and concision;and 4)standardized and professional language.The task was completed under the guidance of these principles.In this report,three translation strategies are summarized at different linguistic levels:1)Conversion of parts of speech(at the morphological level).During the translation process,nouns nominalized from verbs in the source text are usually converted into verbs in the target text as nominalization is common in legal documents written in English to help convey the precise and complex legal concepts.2)Combination of juxtaposed synonyms(at the lexical level).Juxtaposed synonyms are synonyms always used together,not separately,with little nuance of meaning.They are therefore combined into one phrase in the target text without distortion of the legal effect.3)Repetition of the predicate and its indirect object(at the syntactical level).In the source text,a list of conditions is made in one simple sentence where the predicate and its indirect object are placed above its direct objects listed in sub-category paragraphs.The predicate and its indirect object are repeated before each of its direct object in the sub-category paragraphs in the target text for the avoidance of otherwise confusing word order.Through the task and this report,first-hand experience in agreement translation has been gained and the skills of translating such documents by the translator has been improved.It is hoped that this report provides inspiration for researchers who are interested in agreement translation.