A Study On The Translation Of English Legal Texts From The Perspective Of Morris's Semiotic Theory

Semiotics is the study of signs.According to Morris,signs are composed of a sign vehicle,a designatum and interpretant.The relationship among them consists of three kinds of meanings.They are existential meaning,formal meaning and pragmatical meaning.Translation is the process of interpreting meanings of verbal signs in another language.So far,a lot of scholars have applied semiotics to study translation.However there is not a comprehensive study on the translation of English legal texts from the perspective of Morris' s semiotic theory.Thus,based on Morris' s semiotic theory,this thesis intends to give some tentative suggestions on the translation of verbal signs with three meanings in English legal texts.And this thesis is aimed at solving the following questions:(1)How to translate the verbal signs with existential meaning?(2)How to translate the verbal signs with formal meaning?(3)How to translate the verbal signs with pragmatic meaning? Firstly,this thesis elaborates on the translation of verbal signs with existential meaning from three aspects: with full correspondence,with partial correspondence and with non-correspondence.Then this thesis focuses on the translation of verbal signs with formal meaning at lexical level,at syntactic level and at textual level.Finally,this thesis explores the translation of verbal signs with pragmatic meaning from the following five aspects: indexical meaning,expressive meaning,social meaning,imperative meaning and associative meaning.After the study on three meanings of verbal signs from different aspects,the findings are as follows: Firstly,translators may use literal translation,free translation,narrowing,paraphrase etc to translate the verbal signs with existential meaning and formal meaning in order to help the target readers understand legal texts.Secondly,translators should pay much attention to the context,the sign-users' intention and then adopt proper translation method to translate the verbal signs with pragmatic meaning.But in some cases,translators directly use literal translation to translate verbal signs with pragmatic meaning.In a word,a study on the translation of English legal texts from the perspective of Morris' s semiotic theory makes readers have a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the English legal texts and makes the translation more accurate.