Chapter One Description of the Translation Task
1.1 Translation Task
This section introduces the background upon which this translation practice taskis based, the objective and significance that the translator aims to achieve.
1.1.1 Background of the Translation Task
The traditional Chinese moral concept attaches great importance to the rule ofman and the rule of virtue, and the appearance of the rule of rites and the rule of law islater than the rule of man and the rule of virtue. The traditional Chinese managementmethod is an organic combination of the rule of man, the rule of rites, the rule ofvirtue and the rule of law. Among them, the rule of virtue, the rule of rites, and therule of law is the main way of the rule of man. With the change of the social nature,the rule of man is obviously no longer applicable.
In 1978, it was put forward at the Third Plenary Session of the 11thCentralCommittee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) that “the socialist rule of lawshall be strengthened”, and in the 15thNational People’s Congress it turned into“building a socialist country under the rule of law”. In 1999, the phrase “building asocialist country under the rule of law” was written into the Constitution. Afterwards,“rule of law in an all-round way” was raised in the 18thNational People’s Congress.As a result, in the 19thNational People’s Congress, the realization of a country by law,a government by law, and a society by law was included in the goal of socialistmodernization which was planned to be basically realized in 2035. At the FourthPlenary Session of the 19thCentral Committee of the CPC, it was proposed to “furtherpopularize law knowledge and strengthen all citizen’s legal consciousness”, so as toconsolidate the mass base of “building a socialist country run by law” .Thisindicates that China has embarked on the track of implementing law-basedgovernance in a comprehensive manner.
It has been more than 30 years since 1985 China started to implement the legaleducation to the public. Although the effort has borne some fruits, the high growth ofpopulation over-passed the effort which was put into the legal education, and laweducation can not keep up with the speed of social development. Many people havepoorer legal consciousness and some of them even break the law knowingly.
......................
1.2 Selection of the Source Text
This section focuses on making a brief introduction to Jay M. Feinman, theauthor of the source text and analyses of the style and characteristics of the sourcetext.
1.2.1 Author of the Source Text
Jay M. Feinman received his B.A. degree summa cum laude from AmericanUniversity and his J.D. degree cum laude from the University of Chicago. As anexpert in insurance law, torts, and contract law, Feinman is a member of the AmericanLaw Institute and other professional organizations.
Among his professional activities, Feinman has served as Chair of theAssociation of American Law Schools Section on Contracts and Section on TeachingMethods. At Rutgers, he has served as Associate Dean and Acting Dean of the lawschool. He teaches Insurance Law, Torts, Business Torts, Contracts, and other subjects.He has been recognized for his teaching by receiving the Lindback Foundation Awardfor Distinguished Teaching, the Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching,and the Provost's Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2018 he received the DanielGorenstein Memorial Award from Rutgers for excellence in scholarship, teaching, andservice, and in 2014 he received the New Jersey Association for Justice Gold Medalfor Distinguished Service. Professor Feinman’s many publications include sevenbooks and more than seventy scholarly articles. The seven books are：
.........................
Chapter Two Description of the Translation Process
2.1 Pre-translation
What this section is to introduce are the translation tools prepared by thetranslator before getting down to business, the way of how the translator hasdetermined the equivalents of legal terms in the target language and the schedulesfixed for making the translation in question.
2.1.1 Preparation of Translation Tools
Prior to translation, the translator got two types of translation aids close at hand.One is network tools such as translation software and websites for searching relevantmaterials, the other is paper materials like dictionaries and parallel texts.
The translation software includes Déjà Vu X3, Google Translation and youdaoDictionary; the websites for searching relevant materials primarily consist of CNKI(http://fsso.cnki.net/), Baidu Encyclopedia and Wikipedia.
In comparison with other CAT tools, Déjà Vu X3 boasts at least two features: anefficient post-translation editing environment for machine translation, which improvestranslation efficiency to a great extent, and the terminological library, which can beused to guarantee the coherence of terminology in the translation.
CNKI (Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure), the largest digital librarywith full-text information across the globe, serves as a storehouse of articles, papersand other forms of literature published by domestic and foreign scholars in journals,magazines and on other platforms. On this website, a translator is able to obtainknowledge about the most cutting-edge research on relevant theories, and summariesand opinions on legal translation.
......................
2.2 Translation Process
In this section an explanation is provided about the reason why the translatorchose Static Equivalence and Dynamic Equivalence as the guiding theories and ananalysis is conducted of the difficulties the translator encountered during thetranslation practice.
2.2.1 Strategies of the Translation Process
When selecting guiding theory for the translation practice, the translator first ofall consulted the articles and papers on legal translation on CNKI, including theDomestication and Foreignization Strategies for legal translation (Chen,2016:116-119) and the guiding significance of Functional Equivalence Theory forlegal translation (Xie, 2019:13-14+16). Among them, the translator was attracted bythe Static Equivalence Theory put forward by Li Kexing. In his article StaticEquivalence for the Translation of Legal Texts, Li Kexing(Li, 2010:59-65) has firstcarried out a detailed analysis of the drawbacks of several popular translationstrategies when guiding legal translation, e.g. Dynamic/Functional Equivalence,Foreignization and Domestication, Functional Skopos Theory, CommunicativeTranslation and Semantic Translation (see 3.1 for details). Then he has elaboratedupon the connotation of Static Equivalence and the reason why it suits legaltranslation to a greater extent.
Although Law 101 is a legal book, it is not literally and completely a cold legaldocument like Penal Code and Civil Code, which are entirely made up of nothing butlaws and regulations. Just as Feiman said: this book, abounding with puzzles,challenges, interesting tidbits, thought-provoking questions, and intellectualstimulation (Feinman, 2018:6), intends to pique readers’ interest in the law by meansof humorous and lively language. From this perspective, Dynamic EquivalenceTheory, which brings readers’ response to the fore, is most likely to achieve theintended goal the original author has anticipated.
............................
3.1 Overview of Static Equivalence and Dynamic Equivalence..........................16
3.1.1 Background and Functions of Static Equivalence Theory ................16
3.1.2 Background and Functions of Dynamic Equivalence Theory.............18
Chapter Four Case Analyses of the Translation Process .................... 24
4.1 Translation of Legal Terms & Regulations....................24
4.1.1 Translation at the Lexical Level..............24
4.1.2 Translation at the Syntactic Level ........................30
Chapter Five Conclusion of the Translation Task ....................42
5.1 Major Findings of the Translation Task ........................42
5.2 Limitations and Suggestions of the Translation Practice .....................43
Chapter Four CaseAnalyses of the Translation Process
4.1 Translation of Legal Terms and Regulations
As mentioned in Chapter 3, due to the special mission of regulations, translationof them should not only accurately reproduce the meaning of the source text, but alsoachieve actual effect. This section introduces the problems the translator met whentranslating legal terms and regulations and how she solved these problems under theguidance of Static Equivalence.
4.1.1 Translation at the Lexical Level
When looking up the materials to determine the translations of legal terms, thetranslator noticed that some terms have more than one Chinese translations, forexample, “felony murder” was translated as“重罪谋杀” or “重罪杀人” in differentarticles. In this case, how to choose a more accurate and appropriate translationbecomes troublesome. To tackle this issue, the translator, in the light of StaticEquivalence, evaluated the translations from the perspectives of surface meaning,deep meaning, language structure, style and format. What’s more, the Unified Law ofLegal Terms(introduced in 2.1.2) was taken into account as well to ensure that all thesentences containing the selected translation are smooth and reasonable, so as toreproduce the author’s intention to the greatest extent.
......................
Chapter Five Conclusion of the Translation Task
5.1 Major Findings of the Translation Practice
Before getting down to the translation practice, the translator had studied populartranslation strategies in depth and compared the conclusion of previous reports onlegal translation. Then, the translator, based on the characteristics of the source text,classified the content of the source text into two categories and adopted twotranslation strategies——translating legal terms and regulations under the guidance ofStatic Equivalence Theory and translating the extrajudicial part based on DynamicEquivalence Theory. After reviewing the translation, the translator realized that thesetwo translation strategies functioned as active and effective guidances in thetranslation practice.
Firstly, Static Equivalence Theory ensures the accuracy and preciseness of thetranslation of legal terms and regulations. Readers who are both knowledgeable aboutthe two languages involved and familiar with the expressions of legal language willimmediately be reminded of the structures and the main morphemes in the source text,which assist them to thoroughly grasp the connotation of the text. Beginners can alsolearn standard and authoritative legal expressions by reading such translation, so as tolay a foundation for reading other legal texts later.
Secondly, Dynamic Equivalence Theory was applied for translating theextrajudicial part to achieve the same effect as the source text. As shown in Casestudies, the translation gives priority to the response of the Chinese readers. Suchskills as free translation, addition, conversion of the affirmative into the negative orvice versa, translating the words or phrases into Chinese idioms, were used to sinicizethe translation which makes it possible for target readers not only to receive the samemessage as readers of the source text, but also to evoke emotional resonance in thetext by familiarizing themselves with the content of the text in a graphic and vividmanner.
reference(omitted)