Abstract

There is a general consensus in the academic world that the relationship between law and language matters a great deal. The inexact or incomplete translation of legal texts will result in wild divergence in the course of implementing law provision. Skopos Theory comprises the idea that it is the intended prospective purpose or function of initiator that decides the process of translation rather than the source text, the influence that the source text has on receivers, or the function that writer gives to the source text. Based on Skopos Theory and by some translation examples with errors, this paper analyzes the translation skills in Chinese- English translation of legal texts to elaborate the application of the rules of Skopos Theory in the translation of legal texts.

Key words: legal texts  Skopos Theory  translation skill

摘要

法律与语言关系的重要性是学界的公识。法律文本翻译不准确不完整会直接导致其所代表的法律制度在适用中遇到种种分歧。功能目的论认为决定翻译过程的不是原文，也不是原文对接受者的影响或者是作者赋予原作的功能，而是由发起者发起的译文预期的功能或目的所决定的。本文拟从功能目的论角度，以误译为例，分析法律文本汉译英的翻译技巧，借以阐述法律文本翻译中目的论翻译原则和技巧的运用。

关键词：法律文本；功能目的论；翻译技巧

Chapter One Introduction
Text translation is a barrier for translator to face, especially for those who translate the text with the specific purpose. Legal text, which has a special status, is a kind of text with particular purpose, whose language is characterized by formalness and logic. Therefore, the problem of texts translation should be solved inevitably in the legal text translation. Legal text translation requires not only the functional equivalence in language, but also the functional equivalence in law. The legal functional equivalence means that the role and the effect of law in the source language and in the target language are similar. Only in this way, can the version in target language accurately express the real meaning of the original text and minimize the loss of meaning.
Because of the different legal systems among China, the UK and the American, legal translation will inevitably involve legal concepts from different legal systems, which will cause functional non-equivalence and bring many difficulties to the interpreter’s work. Sarcevic classified the phenomenon into three categories, i.e. close to equivalence, partial equivalence and non equivalence. If there is no Chinese word equivalent to the specific English word, the interpreter, in order to guarantee the faith of the version, may try to use the following translation skills, for example, to omit the unnecessary words, to extend meaning, to paraphrase, to convert parts of speech or to repeat the key words, etc.