A Report On The Chinese Translation Of Elements Of International Law(Excerpts)

Materials of this translation report are selected from the fourth part of the eighth edition of Elements of International Law written by Henry Wheaton,including arguments of the author and additional remarks of the editor.The only published Chinese version of this book is Wanguogongfa translated by William Alexander Parsons Martin.As the first western legal treatise introduced and translated to China,it exerts great influence on the development of international law in China.This translation report is hoped to help improve Martin’s work,further enhance Chinese readers’ understanding of western international law,and make a little contribution to the domestic research on western international law.The source text is classified into legal text.Due to the lack of legal knowledge and features of legal language,the translator has encountered many problems in the expression of relative legal terms,as well as difficulties in the analysis and transformation of complex long sentences.Therefore,the translator chooses Susan Sarcevic’s Text Typologies of legal texts and Zhang Falian’s principles of legal translation as the theoretical framework of the report.There are five chapters in this translation report.Chapter one introduces the origin,significance,requirements and the layout of the translation project.Chapter two describes the translation process,including the analysis of the source text before translation,the detailed translation steps while translation,and the revision after translation.Chapter three introduces the theoretical framework.Then the translator proposes common translation techniques.Chapter four is case analysis,which is the most important part ofthe project.Based on the mentioned theoretical framework,the translator analyzes the translation practices at lexical,syntactic and textual level.Chapter five is conclusion,in which the translator concludes that increasing professional knowledge reserve and improving search ability are very necessary.Besides,limitations of the translation and suggestions for the further study are also provided.