Context And Determination Of Word Meanings In English-chinese Translation

Edited by Malcolm Coulthard,Alison May,and Rui Sousa-Silva and published in 2021,The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics in its 2^nd edition collects academic papers on forensic linguistics and has not been translated into Chinese yet.The Handbook offers updated reviews in the field of forensic linguistics,touching upon 14topics including false confession,police interview,and forensic phonetics.It comprises 43chapters and each chapter includes a wealth of cases to better illustrate the application of linguistics in real criminal cases,thus boasting both theoretical and practical value.The source text of this translation practice is Chapter 9 and Chapter 10.Chapter 9 surrounds the phenomenon of false confession with its focus on the linguistic features of false confession while Chapter 10 centers on the police-suspect interview,exploring its features of multi-mode,multi-purpose,and multi-context as it travels in the judicial process.This report consists of four parts,namely,task description,process description,case study,and conclusions.The translator completes the translation practice with the guidance of Professor Zhang’s four legal translation principles and Professor Sun’s four academic translation principles.Inspired by the principle of context,in the part of case study,the translator discusses how she determines words’meanings with the help of linguistic,situational,and cultural context so as to correctly understand the source text.This translation practice serves as an opportunity for the translator to improve her translation skills,summarize her reflections,and explore how to correctly understand words’meanings with the help of context.More significantly,translating the source text equips the translator with the knowledge on causes and psychology behind the phenomenon of false confession and its linguistic features,and on what changes the police-suspect interview will go through when traveling in the judicial process.Meanwhile,the translator is prompted to reflect on the prospect of applying those research results to China’s judicial system so as to advance China’s judicial justice and to better serve China’s efforts in achieving greater rule of law.Last but not least,it is hoped that this translation practice could provide some experience for legal translation learners in terms of translating similar purely descriptive texts by legal scholars.