On Translation Methods Of Long Sentences In Model Law On International Commercial Arbitration From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

With the irreversible trend of economic globalization and the expansion of China's international exchange,more and more international laws and regulations need to be translated into Chinese.One of the biggest characteristics of legal English represents itself as long sentences.In order to avoid ambiguity and to clarify complex legal relationships,legal English uses a large number of adverbs,conjunctions,prepositions,and non-predicate verbs to form a variety of complex sentences.Therefore,the difficulties of legal English translation lie in how to analyze and clarify the long sentence structures of legal English and transform them into formal legal Chinese.The target language has to be refined and precise in meaning,concise and smooth in sentence patterns.Based on Functional Equivalence Theory,taking Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration as an example and adopting the case analysis method,this thesis explores the translation methods of long sentences in legal English.The thesis aims to answer the following questions:(1)What are the main methods for translating long sentences in legal English?(2)What are the principles for translating long sentences in legal English?(3)What are the differences between translation methods for different types of long sentences?This research has the following findings:The translators of long sentences in legal English mainly adopt the sequential method and reconstruction method.Reconstruction methods can be further divided into inversion,splitting,cutting,embedding and so on.Besides,translators tend to choose different translation methods for different types of long sentences.The translation of long sentences with simple logic or parallel structures usually adopts the sequential method;while the translation of complicated long sentences often adopts reconstruction methods.However,for many complicated long sentences,the translation process often involves a combination of more than one method.The translation of long sentences in legal English often follows the principles of accuracy and precision,coherence and fluency,clarity and concision,solemnity and formality.Influenced by the author's limited theoretical knowledge,there are still some inadequacies about this research.It is hoped that this research can offer some reference to the translators of legal English and give some inspiration for other researchers of legal English translation.