The Application of Functional Equivalence Theory to Legal Translation
—A Case Study of C-E Translation of General Principles of Civil Law of the People's Republic of China

Abstract

Nowadays，legal translation exerts the influence on our life with the increasing globalization．The great significance of legal translation lies not only in the academic area，but also in the political，economic and social areas．It is known to all that legal translation needs not only a large number of practice but also guiding translation theories．Among many theories proposed by the scholars worldwide, Eugene A．Nida’s functional equivalence theory is one of the most widely accepted theories.

This thesis consists of five chapters．Chapter One introduces the background and significance of the research and the structure of this thesis. Chapter Two briefly reviews  General Principles of Civil Law of the People's Republic of China(GPCL) and the significance of its English version（from LexisNexis, which is a world famous database, and many of the world's famous law school, law firms and legal departments of high-tech companies are using this database）， Chapter Three presents the overview of Nida’s functional equivalence theory and analyzes its four characteristics: lexical equivalence, syntactical equivalence, textual equivalence and stylistic equivalence. Chapter Four is the main part of this thesis．The author analyzes the English version of CPCL from functional equivalence perspective．Some merits and defects in the English version are pointed out through abundant examples．The author also tentatively proposes some improvements．Chapter Five is the conclusive part．Finally, it is concluded that functional equivalence theory can be effectively used in Chinese-English legal translation，and the application of the functional equivalence theory to legal translation greatly contributes to improving the quality of legal translation．Meanwhile，the limitations of this study are summarized and some suggestions for future study are put forward．

Key words: Legal translation, functional equivalence theory, General Principles of Civil Law