The Translation Report Of Legal Text From The Perspective Of Text Typology Theory

Nowadays China is advancing the rule of law in all respects.Although there are significant differences of national conditions between China and America,some of experiences in American criminal justice system may be useful to the building of legal system in China.What's more,as both the most important opponent and partner,America has been playing a role that China can never avoid in its reform and opening up policy.Knowing this country's legal system can help China take a better position in bilateral exchanges.This report is based upon the translation of the excerpt of the first chapter from an English legal textbook The American System of Criminal Justice-Cengage Learning(2018)co-authored by the late emeritus Professor George F.Cole form the university of Connecticut,Professor Christopher E.Smith from Michigan State University,and his colleague Associate Professor Christina DeJong.The textbook contains three themes:(1).Criminal justice involves public policies that are developed within the political framework of the democratic process.(2).The concept of social system is an essential tool for explaining and analyzing the way criminal justice is administered and practiced.(3).American values provide the foundation on which criminal justice is based.Text typology was first put forward by Katharina Reiss in her book Translation Criticism: The Potentials and Limitations in 1971.According to Reiss,there are three textual categories: 1)informative text to transfer news,knowledge,opinions,etc.in sum,to inform;2)expressive mainly to transmit contents organized in an artistic fashion,consciously organizing the content according to aesthetic criteria?;and 3)operative to transmit contents of persuasive character to induce the texts receiver to act in the sense intended by the texts sender(or his client)intention which corresponds to the appellative function of the language.The principles proposed by Reiss are whether the translation completely reproduces the content of the original text?and whether the content of the primitive has been fully reflected.The objective analysis of the criminal justice status quo in America shows that the textbook is an informative.Thus,it is reasonable to utilize text typology in the translation practice ofThe American System of Criminal Justice.After careful reading and analysis,the author found out that the common features that stands out through the part are nominalized structure,long compound sentences,and preposition.In order to stick to the principles by Reiss,the author tried to concretize the concept in the nominalized structures by turning them into verb-object construction.Since Chinese is a comparatively concise language,the complications led by long compound sentences ought to be broken with shorter and simpler clauses in Chines as well as nominalized phrases.Comparing with Chinese,it seems that nominalization is a disadvantage in English,while it can be a tool for enhancing the conciseness of Chinese.In respect of the last feature: preposition,the author corrected his translationese by ignoring its function in English.The author believes it is important to freely use equivalent word in Chinese instead of keeping English meaning and function.With these methods dealing with the conflicts between English and Chinese,the author concluded that the priorities in English-Chinese legal textbook Translation ought to be separating modifiers,adjusting word order,embodying nominalized structures,and duly ignoring original function of English words.