Analysis Of The Methods Of Chinese Translation Of Judgments

Judgments feature a relatively fixed format and rigorous expressions.The previous translation reports of judgments mainly focus on the specific lexis and syntax in the judgment,leaving the decretal language in the judgment underexplored.In addition,the majority of the materials selected revolve around cases of personal interests,such as racial and gender discrimination,or the ones concerning commercial issues,while few reports show interest in political institutions of power.Therefore,this report selects United States Forest Service v.Cowpasture River Conservation Association as the translation material.In addition to the core words and typical complex legal sentences,this report explores how to effectively translate the decretal language of judgments into Chinese.On the basis of previous studies,informed by the five principles of legal translation,namely accuracy,consistency,clarity,professionalism and standardization,the author skims the selected materials and extracts decretal language and core words.After fully understanding their meanings by searching information,the author uses the legal dictionaries and parallel text to translate them.In practice,methods such as addition,explanation are flexibly used.Informed by the Skopos theory and the five principles of legal translation,the author proofreads the translation.The report selects typical core words,decretal language and complex sentences as examples for further explanation and analysis.This translation report provides insight into the translating methods of the format of judgment as well as the lexis and syntax of texts of the same topic of political authority.It is found that before translating the whole text,core words need to be selected and translated to ensure consistency.Dictionaries and parallel text are helpful to core word and decretal language translation,mainly in achieving professionalism and standardization.As to complex sentences,logic worths paying attention to,and translation methods such as part of speech conversion,addition,omission,separation and inversion can be reasonably and flexibly used to achieve accuracy and clarity,among other things.