Translating Null-subject Sentences In Legal Text From Chinese Into English ——A Case Study Of Judicial Interpretation Of The Civil Code Of People’s Republic Of China

As Chinese law-based governance and socialist rule of law continue to improve,the country’s external legal and cultural exchanges become more frequent.Judicial translation constitutes the foundation of China’s legal modernization.Legal translation is capable of generating modern Chinese jurisprudence,as the dissemination of different legal systems and their institutional concepts is based on legal translation.On the other hand,the achievements of law-based governance is introduced to China,while the fruit of China’s law-based governance is also brought to the world,enhancing China’s legal system.From this perspective,the increasing prominence of legal translation is signified.This report takes the translation of null-subject sentences in Chinese legal contexts as the research problem,and tries to provide legal translators with feasible strategies for choosing subjects and translating null-subject sentences.Based on the translation practice of Judicial Interpretation of The Civil Code of People’s Republic of China,this report presents the enumeration of null-subject sentences encountered in source text,and classifies them into three categories according to their pragmatics functions,namely prescriptive function,performative function and descriptive function,and analyzes the strategies for choosing subjects in target text and translating null-subject sentences.This report reaches the conclusion that,in translating null-subject sentences,from the perspective of prescriptive function,the the arrangements,relationships,procedures and patterns of behaviour that are to be followed or prohibited can be translated as the subject in target text,and in such cases source text is mostly translated into passive sentence;from the perspective of performative function,the agentive subject,with emphasis on performative components,can be translated as the subject in target text,and in such cases a subject is often newly added;from the perspective of descriptive function,the object described can be translated as the subject in target text,and in such cases other components included in source text are often supplemented as subjects.When translating null-subject sentences with multiple functions,the common concern or focus can be translated as the subject in target text.