An Empirical Study On E-C Legislative Translation Quality Assessment

In 1987,the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region adopted the bilingual legislation system.providing that the Chinese ordinance has the same legal effect as English version.Therefore,it is relevant to assess the quality of the Chinese version.In 1977,German linguist Juliane House put forward a Translation Quality Assessment model,which has attracted much attention.However,empirical research applying this model mostly focused on literary texts.No empirical research on the Chinese version of Hong Kong ordinances using this model has been carried out.Therefore,adopting this perspective will,to a certain extent,contribute to the research on E-C translation of legislative texts.First,analysis of the source text shows that its Field falls into the "specific"category.The Tenor is characterized by the asymmetric Social Role Relationship.The Mode is characterized by a "simple" Medium and a "simple" Participation.The Genre features standard legal texts.Second,by comparing the source text with the target text,several mismatches are noticed.Nevertheless,mismatches only take a small proportion(about 0.2%of the samples).Moreover,the target text employs words and sentences that conform to the norm of classical Chinese expressions and Chinese culture.Thus,the target text is a covert translation and adopts "cultural filters" appropriately.Therefore,despite a few mismatches,the target text passes on primary information of the source text and is an acceptable translation.The empirical study presents several other findings.First,House's model can be applied to translation quality assessment of E-C legislative texts.Second,House's model provides a macro perspective for quality assessment.Third,the language quality of Hong Kong ordinances has improved.However,the study also shows that there is still room for improvement in House's Translation Quality Assessment model.Actually,all legislative texts have common features:the Participant is always "simple",and the Genre is also fixed.Therefore,House's model could be simplified.With a refined model,both the efficiency and effect of translation quality assessment can be improved.