A Perspective Of Translatability And Untranslatability In Legal Text

Legal translation has gained unprecedented importance as globalization intensifies and interaction between nations complicates. However, the progress in legal translation in China does not keep pace with the explosive need of high-quality legal translation brought by the accelerating process of all-round opening and exchange. In this sense, issues related to the need especially deserve further study and research.The discussion concerning the issue of translatability vs. untranslatability in the west and in China has a long history. Translators who have devoted their research on translatability can be divided into three groups by their different points of view on the issue. The first group holds that all translation is impossible. The second group holds that all translation is possible and totally denies the existence of untranslatability. The above two opinions of translation, in their own ways, are neither scientific nor acceptable. A third attitude which holds that there is always, in principle, a channel for message transferring from one language to another because of cultural overlapping and semantic isomorphs. That is to say, any two languages can be inter-translatable in principle.The relativity of isomorphs and the fuzziness of language make translatability a relative concept. Any language is an independent patterned system. Generally speaking, any linguistic form has its own meaning. In another language, this meaning can be expressed with a corresponding linguistic form, but sometimes it cannot be expressed. To be concrete, there exist many obstructions in the inter-lingual transference. Consequently translation can be possible only to some extent. Translatability is necessarily accompanied by its limitations. The existence of limitations of translatability makes it impossible for equivalence to be a criterion of translation.The relativity of translatability or untranslatability is also interrelated with functions of language. The expressive function of language assures general translatability between languages; the cultural function of language determines relative translatability between languages; some linguistic forms by itself constitute the inherent limit of untranslatability.Untranslatability of some linguistic forms is also relative and dynamic. We admit its existence, but we should avoid thinking of it in terms of absolutes. The more differences exist between languages and cultures, the more limitation of translatability occur. It is the untranslatability that results in relative translatability of languages and untranslatability of some linguistic forms.