| This thesis is a corpus-based analytical study. It attempts to analyze the manifestation of the translator's creativity from the perspective of discourse information and explore the constraints on the translator's creativity in the English translation of the Chinese civil judgment.Data are retrieved from the Corpus for the Legal Information Processing System in both the source and target languages. The data are analyzed on the planes of information element and language. Based on the results of data analysis, the author finds that the translator's creativity on the discourse information plane is materialized as information reordering, information addition, information loss and information substitution.On the language plane, the translator's creativity is realized on the lexical, syntactic and discourse levels. On the lexical level, we can observe the transposition, expansion and modulation. On the syntactic level, modifiers, conjunctions, and thematization are the main forms of the translator's creativity. On the discourse level, the translator is found to make alterations on substitutions and conjuncts.After delving into the reasons that lead to the changes thereof, the author proceeds to explore the constraining factors on the translator in light of hermeneutics and Venuti's domestication and foreignization. Different priorities for inflections, word order and function words greatly influence the translator's wording in the target text. The divergences between the Chinese and English legal traditions result in different formats and styles of civil judgments. How to project the Chinese legal system in translation directly affects the translator's translating strategies.The thesis provides an effective methodology and theoretical background for legal translation study. It also sheds light on the legal translation evaluation. |
