Legal Text Translation

Legal texts are a type of text that, like other non-legal texts, have characteristics different from "ordinary language" texts. Legal texts possess normativity and authority. Normativity is evident in the fact that they are products of legislative systems or procedures, not individual creativity; they must use normative legislative language, aiming for straightforward, direct, rigorous, and accurate expression, rather than pursuing individualized unique language styles; they target the external actions of legal subjects; their formation is inevitably constrained by various "presuppositions" about legislative activities, such as legislators should use standard common language or specialized terminology, should adhere to the constitution, should avoid absurd or blatantly unfair results, should not give legislation retroactive effect, and so on. At the same time, legal texts are authoritative texts, and in the process of judicial application of the law, interpreters must recognize the authority of legal texts as a prerequisite for interpreting them and must adhere to institutional and procedural constraints.

From a stylistic perspective, Chinese legal language, like English, also belongs to a highly formal normative style, containing numerous legal professional terms and complex long sentences, characterized by objectivity, contradictions between precision and vagueness, and a coexistence of conciseness and repetition. Therefore, when translating, one must adhere to the principles of semantic, functional, and stylistic equivalence. Semantic equivalence means that at the level of meaning, one should strive for specific to specific, abstract to abstract, vague to vague, clear to clear, and specialized terminology to specialized terminology. Functional equivalence emphasizes the equivalence of sentence-level communicative functions; stylistic equivalence requires formality to formality, normativity to normativity.

Example: The People's Bank of China shall, within three months after the end of every fiscal year, complete the balance sheet, statement of profit and loss, and relevant accounting reports, prepare its annual report, and publish them in accordance with relevant regulations of the State.

Chinese legal language follows a very typical Chinese-style structure, top-heavy with a downward triangle shape. However, the structure of legal English is generally a "top-light bottom-heavy" "upward triangle structure." The conversion of sentence structures during translation naturally achieves stylistic functional equivalence. In legal translation, the translator cannot interpret the author's intended meaning as deeply as in literary translation but must limit themselves to the literal meaning they understand. Therefore, the translator's task is not to eliminate ambiguity and vagueness in the original text or interpret the legislator's intention; instead, they should faithfully reproduce the original text, including any ambiguity and vagueness, in the target language.

◀️：Considerations for Legal Translation

▶️：Chinese-English Translation Comparison