Translation Quality Assessment Of Legal Texts From The Perspective Of "Information Bridges Model"

The study on legal translation in China did not enjoy a very long history and hey mainly focused on the translation of some specific words and sentences. The luthor finds that the study about the English versions of Contract Law of the PRC hereinafter referred to as CL) is rare and the study about the translation quality ssessment (hereinafter referred to as TQA) by tagging texts with information ;lements from the perspective of the "Information Bridges Model" is also uncommon, Nhich inspires the author to conduct TQA about two English versions of CL.This thesis is a case study on the TQA of two translations of CL. All the data ire collected from CL and its two English versions. The author, based on "information structure of legal discourse" raised by Du (2007), conducts a detailed research on TQA of two English versions. Moreover, in accordance with the "Information Bridges Model" put forward by Zhao (2011), socio-cultural system, linguistic conventions, legal system and discourse users can lead to changes of information structure and more specifically speaking, changes of information elements and therefore affecting the transmission of message both when translation is done from English to Chinese and vice versa. By comparing two translations of CL and based on five principles of legal translation proposed by Li and Zhang, the author assesses the translation quality of these two translations and illustrates the process in detail.To sum up, the author hopes this thesis could help to shed some light on the future study on legal translation as well as on TQA and capture legal translators'attention to the influence of such factors as linguistic conventions, social-culture system on C-E legal translation.