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

The translation materials are selected from the first and second chapters of volume IV of the Elements of International Law(translated by Ding Weiliang: Wan Guo Gong Fa),written by Henry Wheaton,a famous American International jurist,in 1836.This book is the first systematic work of international law in the western world.It explains the basic principles,systems and concepts of international law.This translation practice chiefly focuses on the description of the rights such as property rights of citizens of the two warring countries in the war,with the number of words about 10000.First of all,the translator analyzed the language characteristics of the original text in terms of words,sentences and texts,and concluded that legal vocabularies are more complex,formal and professional,legal sentence patterns mainly are complex long sentences,passive sentences and fixed structure sentence patterns,and legal texts are more standardized and rigorous.Then,under the guidance of the four principles of legal translation put forward by Li Kexing and Zhang Xinhong in the book Legal Texts and Legal Translation,including accuracy and precision,consistency and identity,professionalism and standardization,clarity and concision,the translation practice is carried out.At the lexical level,according to the characteristics of legal vocabulary,the translator looked up various relevant materials,especially legal books,trying to find out corresponding legal vocabularies;at the sentence level,the translator combined the characteristics of legal sentences analyzed before to understand and analyze the original sentences;at the discourse level,the translator analyzed the characteristics of the original texts by referring to legal works and parallel texts,and tried her best to keep the original meaning and make the translation smooth.In this translation practice,the translator has encountered many problems such as Latin words,complex sentence structure and lacking of legal background knowledge.These problems have been solved by consulting related books and materials and combining four principles of legal translation.At last,the translator makes a reflection and summary,and draws experience from it,hoping that this practice can bring some inspiration to other translators.