A Study of the Translation of English Legal Vocabulary under the Guidance of the Skopos Theory

Authors

  • Chunxu Qian Ningbo University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30564/ret.v4i1.2699

Abstract

With the rapid development of society, most of countries around the world are all attaching importance to the construction of the rule of law. Many countries are drawing lessons from each others’ excellent legal achievements. Legal translation is an important branch of translation field and is playing an increasingly essential part in legal changes. With the deepening of China’s rule of law, China’s construction of legal system has stepped into a new phase. A large number of excellent Chinese legal documents are being translated into English, and many laws of Britain and America also have been translated into Chinese. The globalization of law has been an irreversible tendency. With the vigorous development of legal translation, how to correctly translate foreign legal achievements into Chinese has become a very arduous task for translators. The research field of legal translation includes the study of vocabulary, discourse, sentence and so on. The quality of translation of English legal vocabulary is key to deciding the quality of the whole translation of the legal text. Guided by the Skopos theory, which is a well-known theory put forward by German School of translation, the author makes a preliminary study on the translation of English legal vocabulary. By using and analyzing example sentences, the author makes summary about five characteristics of English legal vocabulary: common English vocabulary expressing legal meanings, use of ancient English vocabulary, parallel use of synonyms, use of modal verbs, use of professional terms and legal jargon. On the premise of conforming to the Skopos theory, four strategies of translating English legal vocabulary are summarized by the author according to these characteristics of English legal vocabulary, which are respectively fuzzy processing of English legal vocabulary, giving play to translators’ subjectivity, possessing consciousness of legal texts, correct use of domestication and foreignization. The author stresses the important role of translators’ subjectivity in the translation of English legal vocabulary, the correct use of domestication and foreignization and lastly links characteristics of English legal vocabulary, the Skopos theory and strategies of translation of English legal vocabulary effectively. The study has the certain innovation and reference significance in improving the quality of legal translation.

Keywords:

Skopos theory, English legal vocabulary, Strategies of translation

References

[1] Snjezana Husinec. The Importance of Content Knowledge for Successful Legal Language Acquisition[J]. Research in Language, 2011(9): 126.

[2] Cheng Le, Gong Mingyu. A study on legal translation equivalence from the perspective of sociosemiotics [J]. Journal of Zhejiang University,2016(4): 80.

[3] Dai Yongjun. Some theoretical misunderstandings in the application of Skopos Theory in legal translation [J]. Contemporary economy, 2007(1): 23.

[4] Zhang Tingting. On translation criteria skopos theory [J]. New West China 2015(6): 73.

[5] Zhang falian. Legal English Course [M]. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2016:35-36.

[6] Gu Xueliang, he Jianle. A practical basic course of Chinese English translation [M]. Zhejiang: Zhejiang University Press, 2008:337-340.

[7] Liu Guosheng. Chinese translation of polysemy words in legal English context [J]. Journal of Southwest University of political science and law, 2017(2): 124.

[8] Cui Juan, Wang Qingmei. Vacancy of English and Chinese legal terms and translator’s subjectivity [J]. Chinese scientific terminology 2011(4): 28-29.

[9] Chen Jingjing. On vague words in legal translation and their translation [J]. Mudanjiang Education Journal 2012(2): 33-34.

[10] John Rupert Firth.Papers in Linguists 1934-1951[M]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957.

[11] B. Malinowski. The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Language in Meaning of Meaning[M]. New York: Brace and World lnc, 1923.

[12] Jiang Yu. Translator’s subjectivity in legal translation [J]. Legal system and society, 2010(8): 216.

[13] Zhang Guoning, Li Jun. domestication in English legal translation [J]. Journal of Binzhou University, 2007(4): 47.

[14] Yuan Huaping. Foreignization and domestication in legal English translation [J]. Journal of Jilin radio and Television University, 2015(11): 9.

[15] Li Wenjuan. Foreignization and domestication in English Chinese legal translation [J]. Journal of Hubei University of science and technology, 2015(6): 123.

Downloads

Issue

Vol. 4 , Iss. 1 (January 2021)

Article Type

Articles

License

Copyright and Licensing

The authors shall retain the copyright of their work but allow the Publisher to publish, copy, distribute, and convey the work.

Review of Educational Theory publishes accepted manuscripts under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). Authors who submit their papers for publication by Review of Educational Theory agree to have the CC BY-NC 4.0 license applied to their work, and that anyone is allowed to reuse the article or part of it free of charge for non-commercial use. As long as you follow the license terms and original source is properly cited, anyone may copy, redistribute the material in any medium or format, remix, transform, and build upon the material.

License Policy for Reuse of Third-Party Materials

If a manuscript submitted to the journal contains the materials which are held in copyright by a third-party, authors are responsible for obtaining permissions from the copyright holder to reuse or republish any previously published figures, illustrations, charts, tables, photographs, and text excerpts, etc. When submitting a manuscript, official written proof of permission must be provided and clearly stated in the cover letter.
The editorial office of the journal has the right to reject/retract articles that reuse third-party materials without permission.

Journal Policies on Data Sharing

We encourage authors to share articles published in our journal to other data platforms, but only if it is noted that it has been published in this journal.