Approahces To Lexical Difficulties Found In The Legal Text

This report was based on the source text entitled Notice by the Ministry of Commerce on Soliciting Comments on Export Control Law of the People's Republic of China(Draft for Comments)(hereinafter referred to as Export Control Law)which was entrusted by an information technology company.The author started with an analysis of the type of the source text,and then proceeded with a discussion of difficulties found in translation for the purpose of finding suitable translation strategies.This report focuses on the English translation of formal vocabulary,technical words,and fuzzy words in the source text.The author studied the background of the source text involved in the practice,combed the text type theory,and applied the text type theory proposed by Sarcevic,the result of which is the translator's judgment that Export Control Law is a relatively typical prescriptive legal text.Besides,the appropriate parallel text and translation tools were selected for the author's reference and comparison to ensure the relative accuracy and authority of the rendition.Legal language,as a language for the specific purpose,is highly formal.According to the Five Styles of English Usage proposed by American linguist Martin Joos,the features of formal style include the frequent use of common words with a high degree of formality,and frequent use of terms.The standardization of legal term translation requires that legal terminology be prescriptive and consistent,and that attempts be made to avoid the misunderstanding of terminology between Chinese and English legal languages.Although accuracy is emphasized in legal English,in order to achieve the precision of legal language,there are also quite a few fuzzy and flexible words used in legal texts to express legal concepts.The translation of fuzzy words in legal language is also the key point of this report.Due to the differences in legal systems,the principles of preciseness,standardized language and term consistency are applied to analyze the lexical difficulties of the task.The case study ends with an analysis of the connotation of fuzzy words in the source text.The author has found that the weighing and choosing of equivalents of formal vocabulary,technical terms,and fuzzy words for the translation,can largely ensure the relative accuracy of Chinese-English translation of the legal text.