English Translation Of Legal Fuzzy Words From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory-Taking The Civil Code Of The People’s Republic Of China As The Example

As an important carrier of legal activities,legal language is the most direct expression of a country’s legal thoughts.At the same time,the practice of legal translation plays the special role of ‘diplomatic rhetoric’ that spreads Chinese legal thoughts and conveys Chinese legal image.The issue of terminology translation has always been the focus of legal translation research.As an important part of legal terminology,legal fuzzy words have brought great challenges to the translator’s work.It can be seen that the translation research of legal fuzzy words is of great significance.Fuzziness means being unclear,but something unclear is not necessarily bad(He Ziran1985).Legal language is mainly precise,but its fuzziness is inevitable.It should be noted that the fuzziness of legal language is limited,not infinite.The translation research of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China,China’s first officially promulgated civil code(hereinafter referred to as the Civil Code)is of outstanding significance.This paper starts from the fuzzy words in legal texts,based on that of the Civil Code,analyzes the motivations of legal fuzzy language,and categorizes them into several categories: fuzzy concepts,hedges,graded words,fuzzy numerals,and other types of fuzzy words.Then,the original text of the Civil Code and its English translation provided by PKULAW.COM are compared and analyzed.With the relevance theory as the theoretical framework,the paper explores general translation strategies of and major translation methods and techniques of legal fuzzy words.What’s more,there are three important insights for legal fuzzy words translation from relevance theory:emphasis on conciseness and coherence,context-based translation and competent legal knowledge of translation.For legal fuzzy language translation,translators should continuously improve their bilingual ability,expand their legal knowledge and become proficient in their translation strategies.Based on this,legal fuzzy language translation can realize the transformation from fuzziness to fuzziness or from fuzziness to concreteness.This paper is composed of seven chapters.The first chapter is about the introduction,which mainly talks about the research background,significance and method.The second chapter is literature review,which sorts out the related researches on legal language,fuzzy language,legal fuzzy language,and legal fuzzy language translation so as to find the breakthrough of this research according to the existing research results.Then it comes to the theoretical framework of the paper,namely relevance theory.This paper specifically explains the important concepts and connotations of the theory and the relationship between the theory and the translation of legal fuzzy words.Chapters four,five,and six are the focuses of this research.The fourth chapter specifically studies the legal fuzzy words in the Civil Code,mainly exploring its motivations and its classification.The fifth chapter is case study which compares the fuzzy words in the Civil Code with its English translations provided by PKULAW.COM to analyze the general translation strategies,and major translation methods and techniques of legal fuzzy words according to relevance theory.Based on the research content,this paper believes that: when translating legal texts,we should make good use of domestication strategies for fuzzy concept words;for graded words,literal translation methods should be used;for fuzzy numerals and some fuzzy concepts,addition and omission technique should be used;and for ‘de’ pattern word and some fuzzy concepts,shift technique should be used.The sixth chapter explores three important insights into legal fuzzy words translation from relevance theory: emphasis on conciseness and coherence,context-based translation,competent legal knowledge of translators.The seventh chapter summarizes the legal fuzzy English translation of the Civil Code under the guidance of relevance theory.Both the conclusions and limitations of this paper are discussed.Besides,the author also makes a prospect of the future research about the translation of legal fuzzy language.