A Chinese Translation Of The Fifth Part Of Jury Information On The Government Website Of Massachusetts And A Report On The Translation Practice

The Jury System is a major part of the judicial system in the United States,which ensures the people’s direct participation in judicial administration.As the first state in the nation to adopt the One Day or One Trial system,the development and the specific implementation methods of the Jury System in Massachusetts are of advanced and representative significance.It can provide useful references for judicial system reform in China,especially the system of people’s assessors.This thesis is the fifth part of the translation project,namely the Juror Service Website of Massachusetts(https://www.mass.gov/jury-duty),initiated by Professor Hu Zhaoyun.The source text provides a comprehensive introduction,including the functions of the Jury Commissioner Office,the Trial Juror’s Handbook,Accessibility,Jury Duty Delinquency,Managing Stress after Service,the Grand Jury,etc.The source text belongs to the category of legal text,which has distinct characteristics of normativeness,authority,accuracy and preciseness.Therefore,the author adopts the theory of static equivalence put forward by Professor Li Kexing,which targets specially at the field of legal translation,as the theoretical guidance of the project.The report part focuses on analyzing the problems encountered in the process and corresponding solutions from the lexical and syntactical level.As to lexical items,besides the analysis of some legal terms,the author also presents ideas on the precise meanings of some common words in specific contexts,such as "accessibility" and"accommodation",and the skills to deal with fuzzy words.In addition,the author adopts a series of new translations initiated by Prof.Hu Zhaoyun.For instance,"jury","juror","impanel","verdict","jury pool" and "summons" are respectively translated as“决认(团)”,“决认员”,“盘纳”,“威定”,“决认团池”and“征票”.Additionally,the report analyzes the translation methods of sentences from four aspects:long and difficult sentences,passive sentences,conditional sentences,and sentences with modal verbs.Specific methods such as division,reversion,addition,omission and modified translation are used,with an aim to make the target language not only accurate and normative in conveying the meaning and style of the source text,but also completely reflect the writing purpose of the writer.Finally,the author summarizes the experience of this translation practice,hoping to provide some references for future practice of relevant texts.