Legal Translation: From The Perspective Of Functionalist Translation Theory

With frequent and ever-increasing international communications nowadays, legal translation has been playing a more and more important role.More and more scholars have been paying great attention to legal translation and have started related studies with impressive outcome.However,being a relatively new field of study at the moment,legal translation studies so far are mostly focused on the translation skills and specific cases.Without a systematic and scientific theory as the guide,the research on legal translation just seems to be a collage of translation skills.A more nearly mature theoretical system has yet to be developed.The thesis attempts to analyze legal translation from the perspective of functionalist translation theory.According to functionalist translation theory, translation is a purposeful activity,which is intentional,communicative,intercultural and interpersonal.The purpose or skopos occupies the most crucial position in translation process with the skopos rule as the governing rule.Also,the theory also pays much attention to the roles of participants in translation.This is guiding principle for the research in this thesis.With regard to the research target,it's important to keep in mind that legal translation is interdisciplinary,related with linguistics,translation and law.With the skopos-oriented principle and consideration of interdisciplinary nature of legal translation,the thesis focuses on two aspects:one is the typology and functions of legal texts,the other is the roles of legal translators. Finding out the features of legal texts and their main functions will make legal translation practice easier.To come out with a successful translation,legal translators need not only to grasp the meanings of the words and sentences of the original text, but also to understand what legal effect it is supposed to have and how to make the functions in the target language work.So it is essential for legal translators to have profound linguistic knowledge,translation competence and qualified legal knowledge. The thesis also explores the creativity of legal translators,the extent of freedom that translators are entitled to and how they can bring their creativity into full play in legal translation.