Abstract
Quite different from translation for general purposes, transplanted legal discourse is often unmatchable to the target discourse community. In reality, exact equivalence could not be found in terms of translation in legal transplant, which means the major task of translation in legal transplant is to solve lacunae, discursive gaps between the source text and the target text. In legal translation, a lacuna seems to constitute a factor of untranslatability. This paper, based on a study of four cases, argues that equivalence can be achieved within the proposed Translational Triangle. The sociosemiotic approach is adopted in this study to explore the complexity in legal translation, and provide insights into legal translation, both theoretically and practically.
About the authors
Le Cheng (b. 1976) is a professor and Director of the Center for Legal Discourse and Translation at Zhejiang University 〈chengle163@hotmail.com〉. His research interests include semiotics, terminology, language and law, and discourse analysis. His publications include “Attribution and judicial control in Chinese court judgments: A corpus-based study” (2011); “Legal Interpretation: Meaning as social construction” (with W. Cheng, 2012); “Jury instructions in Hong Kong: A Gricean perspective” (with W. Cheng, 2013); and “Reformulating and translating Chinese deontic modality” (2013).
King-Kui Sin (b. 1947) is an Adjunct Professor and Special Consultant at Hang Seng Management College, Hong Kong 〈kingkuisin@gmail.com〉. His research interests include language and law and philosophy of language. His publications include “A matrix of legislative speech acts for Chinese and British statutes” (with S.F. Ni, 2011); and “Out of the fly-bottle: Conceptual confusions in multilingual legislation” (2013).
Winnie Cheng (b. 1958) is a professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University 〈egwcheng@polyu.edu.hk〉. Her research interests include ESP, intercultural business and professional communication, intercultural pragmatics, and corpus linguistics. Her publications include “Teaching professional English and communication: Forming alliances with the industries” (2011); “Legislative bilingualization in Hong Kong: A case study of domestic and cohabitation relationships violence ordinance” (2011); “Speech acts, facework, and politeness: Relationship-building across cultures” (2012); and Exploring corpus linguistics: Language in action (2012).
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
