A Practice Report On The English-Chinese Translation Of Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 1999(Chapter 9 And Chapter 9A)

The Ministry of Justice of the People’s Republic of China launched translation project of the legislation and application of mediation in some overseas jurisdictions,and commissioned the team which the translator joined to translate relevant materials about ADR(Alternative Dispute Resolution)in Queensland,Australia.The source text is excerpted from Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 1999(Current as at 18 February 2021)of the State of Queensland,Australia,and the translator took Susan Sarcevic’s theory of legal translation as the guiding theory for this translation practice.According to the theory,the source text belongs to primarily prescriptive text because it is a statute,which has legal effect and binding force in Queensland,Australia.Guided by the theory,the translator addressed problems and difficulties of translation practice in three levels.At lexical level,the translator did not directly replace the concepts and systems in the source legal system with those in the target language,but solved the problem by several methods,including lexical expansion,descriptive paraphrases and definitions,alternative equivalents and so on.At syntactic level,the translator emphasized three kinds of sentences,including long and compound sentences,sentences of passive voice and conditional sentences.After carefully analyzing the logical structure of the original sentences,and understanding their meaning,the translator tried to achieve the legislative effect of the source text in the target language.At textual level,Sarcevic believes that legal translation is a double operation of legal transfer and language transfer at the same time,and the translator’s creativity should be encouraged at the same time.Recognizing the differences in legislative practices and styles between civil law and common law systems,the translator adopted the legislative styles which is more familiar to the target readers without changing the meaning and legal effect of the source text.Through the translation practice,the translator has gained a better understanding of ADR systems in China and Australia,and has also accumulated practical experience to improve her professional ability in legal translation.