Approaches To E-C Translation Of Judgments

As an important type of legal text,a judgment enjoys high authority and legal value in various legal systems and jurisdictions.Therefore,the translation of English judgments which is meant to be used as a frame of reference in other systems and jurisdictions should be equivalent to the source text in terms of information,semantics and style.This translation report,based on Chanel SAS v EUIPO(the delivery of the judgment by the Court of Justice of the European Union in April 2021),is an examination of some difficulties which the author selects with a view to analyzing the rationale behind the rendition.Guided by the translation norms theory advanced by Gideon Toury,the author pinpoints some typical difficulties in the first place.In the course of rendering the said judgment,the author strives to make the target text as faithful as possible to the source text and achieve functional equivalence between them,referring to the proposed norms in Toury’s theory,many of the problems which the author encountered in translation can be effectively resolved from the following perspectives.Under the guidance of the initial norms,translation governed by the source language culture,through apprehending legal concepts,understanding the text-specific words and following the legalese employed in judgments to ensure the “acceptability” of the target text,will conceivably result in translations which adequately indicate the source text.Translation governed by the target language culture,by analyzing linguistic contexts,unraveling logical connections and compensating the implied discourse information to ensure the“adequacy” of the target text,can lead to translation which will be supposedly acceptably received by target readers.Under the guidance of the operational norms,the author has managed to tackle the problems in complex sentences in translation by converting part of speech,adjusting sentence structures and conforming to the target language,and conforming to the language style of the source text to solve the problems of discourse in translation.Besides,drawing on comparison with parallel texts and discourse analysis,the author takes advantage of the comprehension,expression and adaptation framework,hereinafter referred to CEA framework,categorizes difficulties located at lexical,syntactic and textual levels,and intends to explore the approaches to E-C translation of judgments.The author concludes that the translation norms theory has proven to be of practical significance in guiding the E-C translation of judgments,which can help the author to choose the appropriate translation strategies or approaches under the guidance of such norms and combine with comprehension,expression and adaptation for the purpose of solving the actual difficulties,thus greatly improving the quality of translation.It is hoped that this report can provide some insight into legal translation research,and afford the author herself an opportunity to take stock of empirical experience for the purpose of improving the quality of translation work in the future.