A Report On English-Chinese Translation Of Law-related Polysemous Words In Understanding Common Law Legislation(Excerpt)

This translation report is based on the preface and the first and second chapters of Understanding Common Law Legislation.The original text is a law book centering on the system and method of interpretation of legislation under a common law system.The whole text is well written and professionally worded.The original text contains a large number of law-related polysemous words.To achieve rigor and accuracy in legal translation,the importance of accurate translation of these words is self-evident.In this report,semantic translation and communicative translation theories are chosen as the guiding theory.The law-related polysemous words appearing in the original text can be divided into four categories which are ordinary words that are given legal meanings in a legal context,law-related polysemous words whose meanings are changed when they are combined with different words,law-related polysemous words produced in different legal contexts,and law-related polysemous words whose counterparts can not be found directly in an English-Chinese dictionary.The report analyses their translation through the choice and extension of word meanings with the aim of improving the quality of translation and providing reference for the translation of law-related polysemous words in legal texts.