Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 The Rationale and the Significance
Legal translation as a professional translation practice for special purpose hasattracted more and more attention. For a long time, due to the requirement ofpreciseness, solemnity and authoritativeness in the legal translation, faithfulness forthe legal translation is stricter than other translations, thus, the word for wordtranslation is adopted as the main approach, as Cicero held that the function oftranslator was to render the original text “word for word” into the target language: “IfI render word for word, the result will sound uncouth, and if compelled by necessity Ialter anything in the order or wording, I shall seem to have departed from the functionof a translator” (as cited in Nida, 2004: 13). In this view, the translator’s subjectivityis very limited. It is admitted that the subjective initiative and creativity enjoyed bylegal translators are the least in all types of translations, but the translators’ subjectiveinitiative and creativity play very important role in the legal translation. Firstly, legaltranslation takes preciseness as the priority, so a translator should fully play his/hersubjectivity to have a comprehensive understanding of the source text. Secondly, lawrepresents and reflects a country’s culture, so to some degree, it carries the culturalcharacteristics which can not be conveyed by the word for word translation, therefore,translators should exert their subjectivity in accurately conveying the meaning andculture connotation of the source text.
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1.2 The Layout
The thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction of thesignificance and the rationale of this thesis. General organization of the paper alsooffers some guidance for the framework of the present endeavor.Chapter 2 is the literature review, including the development of the status oftranslators from invisibility to visibility, studies on the translator’s subjectivity bothabroad and in China, and a general review of the translator’s subjectivity in legaltranslation. Through reviewing the literature, critical thinking is motivated and newissues are found.Chapter 3 is the theoretical framework which provides the theoretical foundationfor this thesis, it first elaborates how the hermeneutic translation theory originatedfrom the Hermeneutics, and then a detailed introduction of Steiner’s HermeneuticMotion is given.Chapter 4 analyzes the cases of translator’s subjectivity manifested in C-E legaltranslation under Steiner’s Hermeneutic Motion theory, and then the author putsforward some enlightenments of George Steiner’s Hermeneutic Motion fortranslator’s subjectivity in C-E legal translation based on the case analysis.Chapter 5 summarizes some translation techniques at the lexical, syntactic andtextual levels employed by the translators to bring into full play their subjectivityunder Steiner’s Hermeneutic Motion theory, which attempts to provide a practical andsystematic methodology for legal translators in the further C-E legal translationpractices.Chapter 6 concludes the thesis, and the author is to offer some limitations of thethesis and put forth some suggestions for the future study of the present field.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Studies of the Translator’s Subjectivity
Translation activity has a long history, which is an important way forcommunication among the people who speak different languages, so it has played asignificant role in the communication of different cultures. As the subject oftranslation activity, the translator’s status has undergone a transition from invisibilityto visibility.For quite a long time, the status of translator has been marginalized or even beenneglected in the history, many translation theorists and translators both in the Westand the East have always paid much attention to the language level of translation withno emphasis on the status of the translator. J. C. Catford (1965) once said: “translationis an operation pe
