t of theories and principles of legal English translation to guide the practice of legal English (He, 2004, Xiang, 2011, Yu, 2015). This study aims to combine with typical cases to study the translation of legal English from the perspective of functional equivalence in order to improve the quality of translation of legal texts and guide the translation of specific legal texts.
2.0 Literature review
2.1 International research situation and development
2.2 Domestic research situation and development
3.0 Vocabulary
3.1 Old English
3.2 Lack of exact equivalence terms
3.3 Ambiguities of language
4.0 Sentence
4.1 Declarative sentence
4.2 Complete sentence
4.3 Long sentence
5.0 Text
5.1 Characteristics of legal English text
5.2 Language accuracy
5.3 Language style of text
5.4 Translation of modal verbs
5.5 Cohesion and Coherence
5.6 Discussion
6.0 Conclusion
Functional equivalence theory emphasizes that legal English translation is not a simple equivalent of literal form, nor is it limited to expression of literal meaning (Nida and Waard, 1986). It emphasizes the equivalence of legal function, emphasizing that what readers’ response to the translated information is basically the same as what they respond to the original text. Outstanding performance of functional equivalence theory in legal English translation is equivalence of effectiveness and function, while taking into account the equivalence of form (Ahiamadu, 2006). Under the guidance of the theory of equivalence, translators should adopt appropriate translation techniques such as literal translation, addition and subtraction of words, completing sentence, adjustment of word order, transformation of words based on the different characteristics of legal English vocabulary, sentence and text. They should master as much legal language as possible, understanding meaning and usage of these special terms, and paying attention to the different cultural backgrounds and habits of using the two languages in the translation to ensure the accuracy, rigor and effectiveness of legal translation.
This study mainly studied the application of functional equivalence theory in the process of legal English translation from the three levels of word, sentence and text. In the lexical level, this study mainly discussed Old English, the lack of corresponding terms, ambiguous language, how to use functional equivalence theory in the process of legal English translation. In terms of sentence level, it mainly explored how long sentence, complete sentence, long sentence and nominalization structure can be translated by using functional equivalence theory. At the level of text, it mainly analyzed the veracity of language, the style of text, and the use of functional equivalence in the use of modal verbs, how to achieve cohesion and coherence in translation. Of course, there are many other difficulties in legal English translation, there are also many other valuable translation theory based on functional equivalence, limited to the length of this thesis, the author did not further discuss, which would be explored in the future study in terms of these translation techniques.
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