Research in the Translations of Legal EnglishPollyAbstractThis research paper summarizes the basic characteristics of legal English, some principles to obey and some skills to use when translating the legal English into Chinese. In addition ,I introduce some factors affecting the translation of legal English such as lexicon and culture background. Doing such research benefits my study both in law and English.Since I am a law-major student, this research is very helpful for improving my knowledge in law and translation.It is a worthy research to do for an ET-class student in the same way.Contents1.Introduction (4)2.Characteristics of Legal English..........................................................................................4-6Lexicon characteristics.....................................................................................................4-5 Syntactic Characteristics..................................................................................................5-6 Factors Affecting the Translations of Legal English...........................................................6-7 Lexicon factors.. (6)Culture Background Factors (7)Principles of Translations in legal English..........................................................................7-8 Solemnity. (7)Accuracy (8)5.Conclusion...........................................................................................................................8-9IntroductionTranslation is a comprehensively complicated procedure.It is cross-linguistic,cross-culture and cross-social.Meanwhile,translation procedure is not just a language transforming procedure.It is more about a culture transforming procedure.Legal English, as for its own literary style,it should be formal when used into profession career.Therefore, legal English is a specific and professional language as a variant in the whole English register. There are particular expressing ways and norms in legal English, because countries who use common law make them happen gradually by juridical practices. Consequently, legal English is quite different from common English, with forming its own special literary style. Due to the different histories and customs in different countries’ legal systems, although they have familiar juridical sources,their legal construction can not easily be familiar.Translation of legal English involves comparasion to different legal systems while trying best to make the translation match the original text.Translators have to master the characteristics and culture of legal English so that to better translation works.Characteristics of Legal EnglishLexicon characteristicsLexicon is the basis of language.According to Mellinkoff's Dictionary of American Legal Usage: “Lexicon of legal English is divided into six types including profession law terms, old English vocabulary, loanwords which the etymology is Latin and French words, common words with professional meaning,formal words and words in pairs”(Mellinkoff .6)Professional law terms, such as “Plaintiff,” “aforesaid,” and “Recidivism,” they are in typical literary style of legislative language, simply not exist in other register.Common words with professional meaning, we shall exclude the common meaning that are not related with the law in the common words. Only that way can we clearly reveal the specific law meaning of common words and avoid confounding common meaning with professional meaning. For instance, the word “society,” common meaning is that people in general, thought of as a large organized group. However, its legal meaning could be an insurance company.Loanwords are common to be seen in English and so is in legal English.Most of the professional law terms are originated from Latin words during the Middle English Period and the following Renaissance.So its normal to see great amount of loanwords in legal English.Syntactic CharacteristicsComplex of syntax is a great difficulty for tyro while dealing with the legal files.It is the complicated noun structures, frequent used passives and long sentence structures that make the complex show up.In the mean time,they are the main characteristics of syntax in legal English.In addition,difficulty is increased by Adverbial clause of the compound condition and the prepositional phrases used in high rates.Here,I will explain how to use the Adverbial clause of the compound condition in the translation of legal English.In legal English,sentences contain subject and predicate are more often to be used,which we call complete sentence.Do not use elliptical sentence and monotreme so that avoid various interpretation.As Crysta and Davy once pointed that"Legal sentences are usually self- contained units which convey all the sense that has to conveyed at any particular point and do not need to be linked closely either to what follows or to what has gone before ." ( Wong, Crysta. and Davy Ting.58)Translators should analyze from grammars and comprehend the whole meaning of the sentence at the beginning.First is the sentence structure then the relations between them.After all of this,you can finally use proper Chinese to translate them.Factors Affecting the Translations of Legal EnglishSince I have list the characteristics of translations in legal English above,it is necessary to know the factors affecting the translations of legal English before making the accurate translation. Lexicon factorsIn some formal legal texts lik e contracts,old words such as “whereof,”“wherein,” “whereby,” “herein,” “here inafter,” “herew ith,” “therefore,” “therefrom,” “thereon” are used in great amount to make the expression more clear. In sentences with those words, “where,” “there” or “here” can be considered as “which” and “that,” referring to the former or latter situations and objects.If we do not understand how to use these function words,it would be very hard for us to comprehend and translate.Loanwords especially Latin words and French words also affect the translation in a deep way.In America, students majoring in law need to finish and pass the Latin course among 1 to 2 years.We can see that loanword is so important in America’s law education.As a branch of the civil law system and the common law system, Roman law and the following French law had a profound influence on the success of the law in the whole world. Consequently, legal English draws lessons from Latin and its words. I am going to give an example,which I quote from an article.The word ,“res,” means “thing.” In the “decree in rem,” “rem” means “thing,” too and in “chose in possession,” “chose” is a French word and also means “thing”( Frederick G.13).So we can draw conclusion that being familiar to the Latin words and other loanwords benefits a lot to learning legal English,or it would bring a lot of difficulties to translation.Culture Background FactorsEnglish and Chinese are born in different language culture background. No matter the manner of writing style or diction, th ey are far more different. “English sentence has more clear logic so hypotaxis appears”(Wong 4). Using words repeatedly is not regular in English grammar. In English, we use pronoun and auxiliary verb for lexical equivalents.But in Chinese, we attach importance to parataxis. Because of the difference between two languages,and the accuracy demanded in legal language,it is hard to obey the two grammars at the same time,while translating. However, Translators could take advantage of various translating skills such as “Amplification ,” “Ellipsis,” “Positive and Negative ” (Zhang 8)Principles of Translations in legal EnglishLegal English is a kind of language with strong practicability.Basically, there are four main principles,including Solemnity, Accuracy, Refining Principle and Same Term Principle. Solemnity relates to rights and obligations.Party in real case owns its rights and obligations,it is so important to be serious about the words and sentence.That is the reason why legal English should be solemn.Accuracy is easy to be understand.Because Accuracy is regarded as the soul of translation, it is translators’ duty to make the translations specific and clear.Pay attention to the differences between Chinese logic and English logic, avoiding being affected by the thinking ways you have in your daily life.Translations always miss the accuracy by using wrong words.Refining Principles would be a challenge for translators.To refine the translation needs translators to be good at handling language.It means that translators are required to use small amount of words to translate and sum up great amount of information ,to be sample and abandon the complication.Same Term Principle exists for maintaining the conception, the connotation and stuffs to be matched at the same level in legal area. If we do not obey the principle, works might be left to various interpretations.To reach the demand of this principle,we can use same words for more times.Once we decide to use the word, we should keep to the last.ConclusionAfter analyzing the characteristics,factors and principles of the Translation of legal English,we can obviously understand that translation of legal English is more difficult and complicated than in other areas.When we translate, we need to pay attention to the history ,thinking ways and other aspects in English and Chinese.That requires us to accumulate words no matter loanwords or professional terms in English and Chinese.In addition,it’s better to strengthen our own mother language and some relative legal culture,improving our level to a new stage.All I have stated in this research are relative to culture difference.As we know, learning a language is learning a new culture and a new logic.I prefer to master the characteristics of the culture in two different language rather than just memorize the specific words and terms to improve my level.Only by mastering the characteristic of culture can we choose an accurate direction when we translate.As for me, a law- major student, I have to be more professional in legal knowledge so that to get rid of barriers which seems to be unprofessional.One more point, language is lively and legal language is not the exception.It is changing all the time.Updating the professional knowledge and skills is far more promising for a translator.Works CitedMellinkoff, David. The language of the law [M]. Boston:Little Brown, 1963: 6.Wong, Crysta. and Davy Ting .Introduction to English Stylistics, China:Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,2001:58Frederick G. Kempt. Historical Introduction to Anglo-American Law.Beijing: Law Press China, 2001:13Wong, Boran.To See the Linguistic Differences Between Chinese and English from Cultural Differences.Beijing: Dongbei University Press,2000:4Zhang ,Peiji. Yungen Yu. Zongjie Li. and Moyu Peng. A Course in English-Chinese Translation.Beijing:1980:8。