A Study Of Translation Of Legal Terms

After more than a hundred years' political and legislative reform,the notion of"legal science" was introduced into China.Chinese scholars initiated research in legal science and have achieved great success,which is believed to attribute to translation--a communication bridge of culture.Therefore,translation of legal science has been developed in accord with the perfecting of legal science.The language of legal science owns its special characteristics in diction,sentence pattern and discourse structure, especially legal terms have been used frequently,resulting in enormous difficulties faced by a translator.To solve those difficulties,this paper discusses how to translate legal terms and proposes three strategies tentatively.At the beginning of Chapter Two,the history of legal science is discussed. Afterwards,the differences between the language of legal science and legal language are explained so as to make the purpose of the present paper more concrete.Then,translation of the language of legal science is elaborated from the classification of the language of legal science and status quo of translating the language of legal science.In Chapter three, three problems in translation are illustrated,which are misunderstanding,cultural influence and vacancy of legal terms,then the methods to solve these problems are offered.In Chapter Four,different legal systems between China and English-speaking countries and translation of different accusations in Criminal and Procedure Law are explained.There are three differences in legal systems between China and English-speaking countries.First,the sources of legal system are absolutely distinguishable between China and English-speaking countries.Next,the purview of judges in two legal systems quite differs from each other.Third,differences in legal structure and litigant procedure should not be neglected.Therefore,there are two difficulties faced by the translator:one is how to translate a great number of legal terms with similar meaning while possess different judicial explanations and translations;the other is how to translate non-existent accusations in corresponding legal system.In Chapter Five,the norm and strategies to translate legal terms are proposed.To achieve principle of exactness,the translator should be accordance with the characteristics of legislative language,the nature of the original text and the legal connotation of the source text.Meanwhile,three strategies can be used:seeking the closest equivalents,paraphrase, and borrowing and neologism.Finally,the conclusion is drawn:translation of legal terms is an important component of translating the language of legal science.In the process of translating legal terms,the translator should pay special attention to legal terms,and try to adopt the norm and strategies of translation suggested in the paper.