The Chinese Translation Of Long And Complicated Sentences In English Legal Texts

With China's entry into the WTO, the economic and business intercourse between China and foreign countries is inevitably on the increase, various relevant legal documents are playing more and more important roles. As English is the language which is most widely used all over the world, English legal documents also become the legal documents that are most widely and frequently adopted. In the meantime, with the rising status of China as a polar of the world, Chinese legal documents are becoming increasingly important.In view of the differences between China and foreign countries in terms of languages, cultures and/or legal systems, it is quite necessary and important to produce translations of legal documents to facilitate the correct understanding and effective communications between the related parties of the legal documents.However, there still exists certain gap in the understanding and studies of China in the laws governing the two-way translation of Chinese and foreign legal documents (including the English-Chinese two-way translation). Given the great differences in Chinese and English languages as well as the disparities existing between China, as a country with civil law system, and the countries with common law system in terms of culture and legal system, the translation of English legal documents into Chinese falls into one of the most difficult kinds of translation, the long and complicated sentences contained in the English legal documents in particular constitute bottlenecks which may make or ruin a good translation.With a view to making minor contributions to the studies in this field, this thesis sets out from the above facts and necessities, makes detailed analyses of the characteristics of legal texts and features of the long and complicated sentences contained therein, demonstrates the translation strategy which shall be adopted in doing such translation, i.e. taking foreignization as the leading strategy and appropriate domestication as the supplementary strategy and further proposes the corresponding methods of doing such translation.This thesis consists of six chapters. As an introduction, Chapter One provides the theoretical basis and research methodology of this study, namely, the theory of LSP (language for special purposes) and text typology proposed by German scholar Kartherina Reiss. A number of research methods are employed such as comparative analysis, case study, etc. Chapter Two presents brief historical surveys of legal translation both in countries with common law system and in China. Chapter Three focuses on the general features of legal texts and legal English and sets out the criteria and fundamental principles regarding legal translation, distinguishing legal texts from other texts and demonstrating why legal translation is special. Chapter Four goes a step further and identifies the features of long and complicated sentences in English legal texts, one of the greatest challenges confronting translators in doing legal translations. With this in mind, Chapter Five proposes the strategies and corresponding methods to be employed in translating complicated sentences in English legal texts. The concluding remarks in Chapter Six serve to summarize the main discussions in this thesis and make suggestions for further studies in this field.