| This is a report on English-Chinese translation of Residential Lease for Fredericton Rentals Ltd.The parties of this agreement are Fredericton Rentals Ltd.in New Brunswick,Canada and three Chinese students.The translation work of this agreement is entrusted by an overseas study consulting company in Nanjing.The translation is required to be accurate,logical and well-structured.The characteristics of the source text include a large number of formal legal words and phrases and modal verbs;imperative,passive and compound sentences and rigorously written in discourses.Therefore,before translation,the author looks into the parallel texts of Chinese-English legal agreements(based on the comparison between the Chinese legal system and Anglo-American legal system)and studies the terminologies carefully.After the initial translation,the translation is revised for several times,and the author consults a professional reviewer to make the translation more accurate and consistent.This report is composed of five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction of the task,which expounds the lexical and syntactic characteristics of the source text,the status quo of domestic legal translation studies and the significance of the task.The second chapter is the description of the task process,including pre-translation,the translation process and post-translation.The translation preparations include looking into parallel texts,standardizing terminologies,the principles of translation and theoretical basis for translation(the application of functional equivalence theory in this work).The third chapter is the analysis of source text,including lexical and syntactic features.The fourth chapter is the case study of the difficulties of this task and the methods as well as techniques the translator uses in translation.The last chapter is the conclusion,including the major findings and limitations.From the case study of the difficulties of this task,the translation methods and techniques are concluded.At the lexical level,after the identification of their meaning conversion is used for modal verbs to ensure the equivalence in modal meaning and collocation.Moreover,common words with special meanings are translated through standardization to normalize the translation,and formal words are translated through literal translation so as to be faithful to the source text.At the syntactic level,firstly,division is used in translating long sentences and subordinate compounds to comply with the target language.Secondly,restructuring is applied to translating compound sentences and sentences with unclear structure,which focuses on reorganizing the sentence structure so that the equivalence of direct and indirect meanings can be achieved.Last,passive sentences are transferred to the active voice through adaptation so that the TT readers’ understanding is equivalent to that of the ST readers.Through this practice report,the translator has a systematic understanding of the characteristics of the legal text,especially the commercial contract text,grasps main methods of legal translation and most importantly,and has accumulated experience for future practice. |
