A Practice Report Of The E-C Translation Of The Final Judgment Of The Case:Krupp Company Vs. Sinochem(Overseas) Company

This report is written on the basis of translating the judgment of No.107 Guiding Case,No.35 [2013],Final,Civil Division Ⅳ,SPC(Thyssen Krupp Metallurgical Products GmbH vs.Sinochem International(Overseas)PteLtd),which is the final decision on the disputes arising from a sales contract.The translation intends to offer some references for the study of international business and law,and the trials of foreign-related commercial and maritime cases.The source text is a judicial instrument with some unique features.From the perspective of lexical level,vocabulary including professional terminologies related to international trade,international law,civil law and judicial procedures is frequently used.As a judicial instrument,the source text has some common syntactic features,such as using repeating and formulaic sentences.At the same time,the judgment owns an unique feature that it includes both prescriptive and prescriptive contents.The textual differences between judgments in China and in common law countries should be taken into consideration.The format of the judgments in China is basically formulaic and fixed,while the format of judgments in common law countries is relatively flexible without a certain fixed model.The judgments in China mainly discuss the facts,evidence and laws related to the case,while the judgments in common law countries,in particular,the United States,will introduce relevant past judicial precedents.The translator decides to preserve the unique features in Chinese judgments without changing the legal meaning of the source text instead of total domestication.According to Susan Sarcevic’s Legal Text-typology,the translator identifies the source text as primarily descriptive but also prescriptive text,and tries to achieve the legal equivalence put forward by Susan Sarcevic.Six Practical Principles in Legal Translation proposed by Professor Li Kexing are also used during the translation process as practical techniques and reviewing measures,which has contributed to the promotion of the quality of the translation.During the translation process,the translator encounters some difficulties respectively from lexical,syntactic,and textual perspective.From lexical perspective,legal terms with near-equivalence,partial equivalence,and non-equivalence features are frequently used in the source text.Translating terms which have non-equivalence in the target text is the most difficult,so the translator adopts some translation methods such as descriptive paraphrases and definition to achieve legal equivalence.From syntactic perspective,there are two types of sentences in the source text.When translating sentences with prescriptive features,literal translation method should be put at the first place to ensure the accuracy,precision,clarity,concision,professionalization and standardization of language of the translation.When it comes to sentences with descriptive features,liberal translation method and more translation techniques can be used to achieve functional equivalence.From textual perspective,unique features in Chinese judgments are preserved in the translation in order to present the characteristics in China,even in civil law countries.The translator made great efforts to make pre-translation preparation,solve the difficulties in the translation process and conduct proofreading after the translation in this translation practice in order to achieve legal functional equivalence.