On The Application Of Economy Principle To C-E Legal Translation

The simplification of language has become an irresistible trend, so as in legal language. The Plain English Movement arising in Western countries since 1970s pushes forward the stylistic change of legal documents. The precise and simplified language is helpful to enhance the effect and efficiency of legal documents. In legal translation, we should not only follow the language traditions and conventions, but also break the outmoded customs and habits. In some suitable context, we can convert the language from sophistication to simplicity and employ the simplified language to make the whole writing clear, concise and persuasive.For the above intention, the economy principle is applied to legal translation in this thesis. On the basis of precision, simplified legal language has the following four primary qualities: economy, familiarity, directness and orderliness. In view of the linguistic features of legal English, the language techniques on lexical and syntactic level have been proposed for the simplification of legal English translation. For example, we should discard obscure archaic words, big words and redundant phrases as well as complex grammar and sentence structures.As a subsidiary pragmatic principle, the economy principle can merge into translation theories to guide legal translation, which would result in improvements of simplicity in the English translations of the legal documents in China.