功能翻译理论视角下的《纽埃海关法》英汉翻译实践报告之英语分析

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Background of the Translation Task
As China strengthens cooperation with the rest of the world, legal textstranslation is an important branch in the non-literary translation, which contributes tolearning from the laws of other countries, dealing with the legal disputes and signingbinding contracts. The source text of this translation report is retrieved from the Niuegovernment official website. Niue, an island country, is located in the southern partof the Pacific Ocean, and English is widely used in Niue. Niue is now a politicallyindependent country. Niue, a bilingual country, most of the people in Niue speak bothNiuean and English. Yet the legal documents on the official website of theGovernment of Niue are all in English. This provides material for the translationpractice in this report. The translator selected the part about the Customs Act of Niuefor the translation practice. Translating the customs act has great value as it definessome regulations about the import and export rules, taxation and customs duties. Thesource text mainly includes seven parts. It mainly tells about the following aspects:administration form; customs duties and refunds; warehouses; importation andexportation; general provisions as to methylation and tobacco.
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1.2 Introduction to the Source Text Features
The Customs Act of Niue is characterized by preciseness and formality. In thistext, each sentence has its own specific expression with accuracy, clarity andstandardization. The Customs Act of Niue contains many words which are notcommonly used in modern English, such as “provided that,” “notwithstanding,”“pursuant to,” “subject to” and so on. There are some archaic words in the source text,such as “hereto” “herein” and “thereof.” Many common English words have specificmeanings in the Customs Act of Niue. These words are “appeal” “entry” “spirit”“vessel” and so forth. There are many long and complex sentences in the text. Inaddition to the subject-predicate structure, independent genitive structure, parenthesisand subordinate clause are often used in the Customs Act of Niue. The translator needsto analyze the specific structure of translating these long sentences in the source text.
Furthermore, passive-voice sentences are often occurred in the text in order tomake the language more objective. The translation of customs act is characterized byits clear practical effects, which provides a better understanding of the Customs Act ofNiue in addition to familiarizing the readers of both English and Chinese with thefeatures of legal English, that is, with the formality, veracity and solemnity of thiskind of the texts.
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Chapter 2 Translation Theory

2.1 Introduction to the Functional Translation Theory
Before the 1970s, the translation studies were ever regarded as a linguisticphenomenon: a lot of translation theorists tended to look at translation from alinguistic point of view. The translation theory emphasized the central position of thesource text from the perspectives of linguistics in the translation process, and thetextual features of the source text must be preserved in the translation, whichproduced the equivalence theory in the 1960s and 1970s. However, the translationtheorists found it difficult to deal with some problems that occurred in the actualtranslation. Therefore, functional translation theory, which was gradually emerged inGermany in the early 1970s. As a “pragmatic turning point,” the functional translationtheorists thought that it was not enough to treat translation as a linguistic phenomenonand many non-linguistic factors had to be taken into consideration in the translationprocess.
Functional translation theory has gone through four phases and it has formed acomplete set of translation theory schools after several generations of adjustment andchanges. The representatives of the German functional translation school are mainlyKathrinan Reiss, Hans J. Vermeer, Justa Holz-M?ntt?ri and Christiane Nord, and itslandmark theories are Kathrinan Reiss’s pision of functional categories oftranslation criticism, Vermeer’s skopos theory and Justa Holz-M?ntt?ri’s theory oftranslation action theory and Nord’s function plus loyalty theory.
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2.2 Application of the Functional Translation Theory
According to the functional translation theory, the source text is an informativetext. The Customs Act of Niue mainly introduces some provisions as to entries andcustoms duties. The language in the source text is precise and objective. As thefunctional translation theory notes, the determination of the translation strategy mustbe based on the purpose of the translation. So the translator needs to fully consider thetranslation purpose and the specific context when translating the text. The purpose oftranslating the Customs Act of Niue is to make readers know about the customs rulesand regulations of Niue. This process aims to convey specific information to thereaders. In order to reproduce the exact meaning of the source text, the literaltranslation strategy can be used to translate the Customs Act of Niue. Functionaltranslation theory, as mentioned above, the target text should be established a peerrelations with the source text. The translator needs to consider the context, translationpurpose, translation function when translating the text. Niue as referred to the sourcetext was ever one of the colonies of U.K., and then became the overseas territory ofNew Zealand, and now Niue is a politically independent country. Therefore, thetranslator must fully consider political factors when translating the Customs Act ofNiue. In addition to this, the translator finds that the sentence in the Customs Act ofNiue is very long and complex. As above mentioned, the translation must follow thecoherence rule and fidelity rule according to the functional translation theory. Byabiding by the two rules, the target text can achieve the translation function. Thetranslator analyzes the whole sentence and pides the sentence into several partsaccording to the context of the source text. The structural adjustment methods can beused to handle these complex sentences in the source text. The translator uses thesplitting translation method, restructuring translation method and reverse translationmethod and so forth to translate these sentences in order to fit the Chinese expressionhabits.
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Chapter 3 Task Description.............................8
3.1 Preparation before Translation...........................8
3.2 Process of Translation........................................... 9
3.3 Proofreading and Correction.................................. 10
Chapter 4 Case Analysis........................................12
4.1 Translation at the Lexical Level..............................12
4.2 Translation at the Syntactical Level............................... 23
Chapter 5 Summary................................33
5.1 Reflections........................................33
5.2 Limitations of the Research....................................34

Chapter 4 Case Analysis

4.1 Translation at the Lexical Level
In this part, the translator would discuss the translation strategies for customsterms which have specific meanings in the Customs Act of Niue. In this part, thetranslator also focused on the translation of modal verbs “shall” and prepositionalphrases such as “in the case of” “in the exercise of” and so on.
4.1.1 Customs Terms
Example 1:
SL: For the purposes of this regulation and of regulation 24 (e) all such goodsshall be deemed to have arrived at their port of discharge as soon as the master orpilot in command has reported the importing ship or aircraft in accordance withsection 45 of the Act.
TL: 根据本条规定及海关法第 24（e）条规定，船长或机长遵照海关法第45 条例报告船舶或飞机进港，即视为所有货物抵达卸货港口。
Analysis: The original meaning of discharge is “排出” or “解雇” in commonEnglish. When it used as a verb, it means removing or sending something. Accordingto the source text, “discharge” here is used as a noun, and it means the act ofunloading the goods in this sentence, so “卸货” is used to translate this term to fit thecustoms law context.
Example 2:
SL: Any goods to which paragraph (1) applies shall be deemed to have beenentered for export when the bill of loading or air consignment note or air waybill, asthe case may be, is presented to the Manager or other proper officer.
TL: 条款 1 适用的所有货物，将装货单或空运托运单（视具体情况而定）提交给海关主管或其他海关工作人员时即视为入境。
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Chapter 5 Summary

5.1 Reflections

reference(omitted)