Report On The Translation Of Bell V.Itawamba County School Board

This thesis is an E-C translation project of a judgment on cyberbullying in the USA.The issue of the case is whether a school infringes on a student 's First Amendment rights to freedom of speech for disciplining that student for vulgar language.In the past few years,cyberbullying has deteriorated to a social issue worldwide that is becoming increasingly urgent,but relevant research in China is still scanty,not to mention any legal institution.Therefore,the author feels obliged to bring the lamentable issue to public notice and to introduce efforts made by legislators,educators,and parents in other countries in this respect.This thesis consists of five parts,namely task description,process description,quality control,case analysis,and conclusion.In case study,the author makes a detailed and example-based analysis at the lexical and syntactic level.At the lexical level,the translation of abbreviations of case citations and legal principles,common words with uncommon meanings,and nominalization is explored;At the syntactic level,care is taken to the translation of two classes of modifiers,namely adverbial modifiers and attributive clauses.In this translation,the author proposes a distinct translation method for case citations.If a case citation appears for the first time,only translation of the names of parties involved will be retained in the body text while full translation will be edited as a footnote followed by source text put in a bracket for the convenience of relevant references.If a case citation appears again,partial translation,i.e.,translation of the names of parties involved,suffices to provide basic information about the case.The method guarantees clarity as well as prescriptive function of the text.In addition,the translation is completed under the guidance of text typology,legal equivalence,and the idea of context.From the point of the translator,the type of a text should be identified first for the constraints on terms,syntax,and discourse in a given text type.That is followed by making a distinction between prescriptive language and descriptive language to determine appropriate translation strategies and methods.Given that the boundary between prescriptive language and descriptive language sometimes blurs,translation strategies and methods should be selected as appropriate.Finally,under the guidance of legal equivalence and context,specific translation methods are used for translation at lexical and syntactic level,e.g.,transposition,expansion,modulation,and restructuring.It is proved that the application of the theories of text typology,legal equivalence,and context is of great significance to judgment translation.The author hopes that it is conducive to other translation practices in legal translation.Last,in translating this US judgment containing references to a number of precedents regarding cyberbullying,the author hopes that such effort will be conducive to research on cyberbullying in China,especially research on relevant legal institutions.