A Report On Translating The Regulations Of Shanghai Municipality On The Protection Of Women’s Rights And Interests

This report is based on the translation of the Regulations of Shanghai Municipality on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests.The Regulations are made up of 10 chapters and70 articles,including chapters of general provisions,political rights,personal and personality rights,cultural and educational rights and interests,rights and interests related to labor and social security,property rights and interests,marriage and family rights and interests,remedy measures,legal liability,and supplementary provisions.To be more specific,the Regulations make clear the guiding principles for the protection of women’s rights and interests,set forth the rights and interests enjoyed by women,and specify the remedy measures for the purpose of giving full play to the role of women in political,economic,cultural,and social aspects and in family life,and promoting the all-around development of women.During the process of translation,it is found that the Regulations,as legislative texts,are those whose function is primarily prescriptive,which feature accuracy and precision,identity and consistency,and generality and inclusiveness.More specifically,there are a majority of legal terms and strings of synonymous words in the Regulations.Terms and concepts remain consistent both within the Regulations and with superior laws and regulations.What’s more,fuzzy expressions are also a common occurrence in the Regulations.Among them,the major difficulties encountered by the translator can be concluded as the translation of legal terms(including the name of organs and specialized terms)and the translation of fuzzy expressions(including deixis,words of semantic indeterminacy,and words of conceptual indeterminacy).Based on detailed case analysis,translation strategies for legal terms and fuzzy expressions can be concluded as follows: As for the name of primary organs,it is advisable to refer to legal documents of supreme authority and high relevance.If there is no relevant parallel text for reference,then it is a good way to trace the origin of organs for relevant English names.When it comes to specialized terms,the translator is supposed to first identify functional equivalents in the target legal system and then measure the degree of equivalency.But when there is no comparable counterpart in other legal systems for system-bound terms,it is advised to make a reference to legal documents of supreme authority and high relevance.Moreover,methods of linguistic interpretation can be applied to a situation where the translations provided by parallel texts contradict each other.As to the translation of deixis,it is advisable to make it more precise if its denoted meaning can be identified from a wider context.If not,the translator ought to keep the deictic expressions in the translation.Last but not least,words of semantic indeterminacy and words of conceptual indeterminacy should be translated with vague expressions of the most similar meanings in the target language.But there also might be an exception to this rule.Under such circumstances,it is advisable to resort to the methods of linguistic interpretation.It is hoped that this report can bring some insights into the translation of prescriptive texts,in particular,the translation of legal terminology and the translation of fuzzy language.