A Report On The Translation Of Foundations Of Legal Research And Writing(Excerpt)

With the growing improvement of rule of law in China and the globalization of legal service market driven by economic globalization,the capability of legal writing in English has increasingly become essential for those who want to deal with international and practical legal affairs.To know how to properly apply legal English and conduct effective written communication based on legal documents so as to protect the client's best interest has been a top target of cultivating talents with legal English writing ability.The source text of this report is extracted from the second chapter of the book entitled Foundations of Legal Research and Writing.The second chapter,named “Legal Reasoning and Analysis”,discusses how to deal with legal issues by the way of legal reasoning and research.The source text features extensive use of abbreviations,technical terms,semi-technical terms and complex sentences,which also add some difficulties to the translation project.Based on the translation practice of the second chapter and the guidance of Nida's functional equivalence theory(1986,cited in Tan,1989),this report is expected to explore solutions to difficulties in legal translation so as to provide a reference for the translation of legal academic texts.According to this translation practice,it can be concluded that amplification can be employed to translate legal abbreviations;literal translation can be used to translate the technical terms;extension,substitution,explanation and diction can be adopted to translate the semi-technical terms;and an integrated method which combines several translation techniques together can be taken to translate the complex sentences appearing in legal text.