A study on the Translation of legal terms in Civil Code from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence功能对等视角下的《民法典》法律术语翻译研究文献综述

 2023-04-20 13:23:34

文献综述

1. IntroductionThis thesis aims to use functional equivalence theory to compare the translation of the provisions of different versions of the Civil Code and explore the best way of legal translation.1.1Background of the research The activity of translation has been of a long history either in the eastern countries or in the west. For example, by the retrospection of the history of translation in China, it is evidently shown that it has experienced four climaxes of large-scale translation since the earliest translation of the Buddhist Scripture from the Eastern Han Dynasty (Ma Zuyi:1998:18). And Tan Zaixi (2004: 2) has distinguished in his A Short History of Translation the West that there have been six stages of western translation activities since the third century B.C. As the interactions and communication between different peoples or different languages have been quite frequent, apart from general translations, the perception that professional openings for translators are increasingly conditioned by market trends(Enrique Alcaraz visible and striking linguistic feature of the legal language which belongs to a kind of technical languages. Since the legal language obviously involves the illustration of legal terminology, a brief introduction to legal language should be mentioned first. On the other hand, the thesis mainly involves the translation from Chinese into English where the emphasis lies in, thus the legal language being talked about in this thesis refers to legal English. As Wikipedia recorded, legal English has traditionally been the preserve of lawyers from English-speaking countries which have shared common law traditions. It is the style of English used by lawyers and other legal professionals in the course of their work, and has particular relevance when being applied to legal writing and the drafting, including legal documents such as contracts and licenses, court pleadings, summons, judgments, acts of parliament and subordinate legislation, and legal correspondence.It is obvious that legal terms can reflect some specific characteristics of different legal systems, social culture and even historical culture, thus it is quite complicated for translators to translate them from one legal system into another. However, translation activity cannot be, or is impossible to be, avoided in intercultural communication especially between two or more legal systems. And translators would never stop exploring guiding theories, i.e., trying to discuss about free translation and literal translation, or find ways to make translations as effective as original texts. Among those, the theory of Functional equivalence cannot be more familiar to every translator. Accordingly, in this thesis , it is necessary to carry out a review about legal terms and the guiding translation theory ---functional equivalence.2.1 Functional equivalence and translation of legal terms The activity of translating is normally treated as a process of communicating the foreign text by establishing a relationship of identity or analogy with it (Lawrence Venuti, 2004: 121). Through such an activity, readers can understand works written in other language systems and receive information as if they were reading the original texts. A good translator must have his own approach of translating, and Peter Fawcett points out in his Translation systems and language :Linguistic Theories Explained (2003: 2) that the approach describes a way translators can adapt texts to the needs of a different audience in the same way we all adjust our language to suit those we are communicating with. Besides, a translator also needs a guiding theory to support his translation. Lawrence Venuti (2004: 121) holds that during the decades, the controlling concept for most translation theory shall be equivalence. Undoubtedly, the theory of equivalence has unique influence on the history of translation. In translating legal terms, it also plays a leading role as a guiding theory.2.2 A brief introduction of the development of the theory of the functional equivalence Many linguists and translators have devoted themselves to solving the problem of equivalence in translating, and even spent their lifetime to this study. All the efforts they offered are to find equal meaning in another language, though the situation in practice might not be so ideal. Earlier in 1957, J. R. Firth first mentioned the word equivalence in his writings on translation, and it was in the latter fuzzy sense and as an item of the general language that the word equivalence was originally used in the English translation theory (Snell Hornby, 2001: 17). However, the first one who unleashes the concept of equivalence is Roman Jakobson, a Russian-born American linguist, in his On Linguistic Aspects of Translation. After that, meaning of the term equivalence keeps moving forward. J. C. Catford divides the concept into textual equivalence and formal correspondence. Eugene Nida then enriches the theory and develops it to the most famous theory of functional equivalence which has been influential. Werner Koller, a German translation theorist, classifies equivalence into four specific types which further develops of the theory of Eugene Nida. And the concept of semantic translation put forward by Peter Newmark is similar to the concept of equivalence. In modern China, Ma Jianzhong, the first Doctor who studies in France, puts forward the concept of good translation (善议), which may be treated as the original shape of equivalence in China. He remarks that a good translation must be the one from which readers can benefit as if from the original text (译之成文能使阅者所得之益，与观原文无异，是则为善译也已) (Ma Jianzhong, 1984: 126). But he does not take the idea into shape, which leads to the result that Chinese translators have to acknowledge the theory of equivalence until the time when Tan Zaixi firstly introduces the theory of functional equivalence inside. And this part makes a brief introduction to the major contributors of the theory of equivalence.2.3 Equivalence theories being used in translating legal terms Translation, as a self-satisfactory system in modern society since it came into being in the early 1980s, and one of the branches of applied linguistics in language society, had been mostly regarded as indispensable, especially for the earliest ways of inter-cultural or inter-lingual communication between different peoples or different linguistic systems since lingual or multi-lingual affairs became impossible or rarely possible. Besides, translation is not only a simple process of decoding, but also involves understanding of both source language and target language, particularly flexible use of two language systems. As to translation of legal terms, professional knowledge is necessary for a translator. It is always hard and complicated. As an official translator, Cappellas Espuny (1999: 2) believes that if a translator wants to find the most exact equivalence of a legal term, the problem may arise at the beginning, since there may be no comparable concept existing in another legal system, and therefore he or she may cause ambiguities, confusion and all types of miscomprehension because of the effect the term in question produces in the reader of the translated text. Now the key problem may be how to make use of general translation theories to guide legal translation in practice for inter-cultural legal communication. In summary, although translation theorists have explored guiding theories for translation, there is still few of research having done in conducting translation of legal terms in the perspective of functional equivalence, as far as the writer is concerned. Thus, it is necessary for this thesis to research into this area, especially taking three English versions of GCLA as examples for analysis.The main purpose of the study was to answer the following questions:1. Which parts of the theory of functional equivalence can be applied into legal translation, or the translation of legal terms?2. What principles can be adopted into the process of translating legal terms to achieve the closet equivalence? References[1] The singular and plural numbers of legal English and their translation strategies [J]. Zhang Falian, Zhao Yongping.. Shanghai Translator. 2020 (05)[2]Construction of the conceptual system of national translation practice[J]. Ren Dongsheng. Foreign Language Studies. 2019(04)[3] Research on the Subject Positioning of Legal English [J]. Zhang Falian. China Foreign Languages. 2019 (02)[4] Cultural Transmission in Legal Translation [J]. Zhang Falian. 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