C-E Translation Studies On The Syntactic Structure Of Legal English—A Report Of Translation Of Personal Housing Mortgage Loan Contract

Legal translation is a daunting task to most of us for it requires "professionalism", especially in C-E translation. Professionalism, in all aspects though, can be viewed from the perspective of linguistics, wherein analysis is available on lexicon, syntax and style. Based on years of practice, the author holds that professionalism can be reflected to the extent of how a translator masters and exerts his knowledge of legal syntax, simply because syntax carries legal styles and expresses the true meaning of the writer, and that is why "diction" has to be weighed on the level of "syntax". In order to achieve professionalism by breaking the bottleneck as "translating for the sake of translation", the author intends to work out systematically legal syntax structures under two broad categories:the principle and the strategies in the application of legal syntax. This is based on the author’s translation practice and his reading and understanding of the legal documents. Different from other scholarly articles that have a complete range of knowledge, this paper is prepared solely on the experience of the author in seeking possible solutions to any problem that he and his coworkers have encountered in translation. And while doing do, the author also introduces necessary legal writing factors so as to render accurately and fluently. By applying syntactical structure in Chinese to English legal translation whereby to probe into an effective methodology in translation practice is so far not prevalent in China. Therefore, the author hopes that in terms of professionalism, this thesis can provide guidance to the beginners.