On The Translation Of Legal Homologous Words In Light Of Functional Equivalence Theory

It is widely acknowledged that correct legal wording plays afundamental role in the total transmission of legal homologous words’meaning in respect of their legal functions in both source and targetlanguages. Legal homologous words translation, a great characteristicof legal terminology, is an essential part in the translation of legalterminology. Legal homologous words are the results of conceptclassification that refer to words whose meanings belong to the samecategory. There are a large number of legal homologous words in legalterminology as law is faced to the whole society and it adjusts all kindsof legal relationship. As a key feature of legal terminology, legalhomologous words should be attached great importance; however,few researches, if there are any, have focused on the translation oflegal homologous words.In legal homologous words relationship, a super-ordinate’sdenotation is wider than that of its hyponym, and the connotation of ahyponym is usually more specific and deeper. The function ofconnotation characteristics of different hyponyms is partially equivalentwith that of super-ordinates; however, their denotation excludes eachother and has some connotation characteristics different from otherhyponyms. Due to the great incongruence among different legalsystems, the legal terminology in one language may not becorrespondent with those in another, the problem of non-equivalence,a ubiquitous source of difficulty in legal translation. After a detailedpresentation of the previous researches about Nida’s functionalequivalence theory and Sarcevic’s partial equivalence theory, as wellas the definition, types and features of legal homologous words, theauthor well elaborates why functional and partial equivalence areregarded as the ideal theories for translating legal homologous words and why the relation of legal homologous words is a kind of partialequivalence.According to the degree of equivalence of functional equivalents,Susan Sarcevic summarizes three categories of equivalence, of whichpartial equivalence theory is the one the author adopts. This thesisresorts to functional equivalence theory and partial equivalence theory.In order to realize the most equivalent state of legal homologous wordsbetween two different legal systems, translators should adopt theproper rule of equivalence theory. The author quoted some examplesmainly from theoretical works on legal translation and summarizedsome from practical works of legal translation. By applying the threerules of equivalence theory, a number of examples are analyzed toillustrate how they should be translated. The three rules, i.e. usingfunctional equivalents, using expansion and using narrowness offunctional equivalence, hopefully, could throw some light on thetranslation of legal homologous words both theoretically andpractically.