A Report On The Translation Of LOCKHART V. UNITED STATES

The author selected a U.S.Supreme Court judgment,LOCKHART v.UNITED STATES(No.14–8358),which was argued on November 3,2015,decided on March 1,2016.It consists of three parts: syllabus,opinion of the court,and the dissenting opinion of some judges.It mainly discusses whether Lockhart,the petitioner,should be subject to a mandatory minimum enhancement triggered by his prior conviction related to sexual abuse.The question resulted from different rules of construction of a modifying clause,triggering a deep discussion among the judges,which is the reason that pushes the translator to translate the judgement.A modifier can change the meaning of a sentence of a provision and then produce different enhancement sentence.Under the guidance of the theory of static equivalence advocated by Li Kexing and his basic principles of legal translation,the translator discusses the judgment translation and analyzes some typical examples from the translation at the lexical and syntactic levels.At the lexical level,the author mainly analyzes common words with legal meanings,legal terms and fixed expressions of cited cases and laws.At the syntactic level,the author explores long and complex sentences,object clauses,attributive clauses,nominalizations and parallel structures.Translators of legal documents need not only to improve their translation skills but also to obtain relevant legal knowledge if they want to deliver a successful legal translation.Through this report and translation,the author hopes to provide relevant translation references for other translators and law workers.