摘 要

随着经济全球化的发展，特别是中国加入世界贸易组织，开展“一带一路”建设之后，中国对外开放的需求迅速增长。然而，在对外开放的过程中，正确准确的英文法律文件翻译在对外交往中发挥着至关重要的作用。翻译是两种语言之间的转换，涉及原作者和翻译者，因此自然涉及原作者和译者的风格问题，即文体学问题。同时，词汇学、语法学、音系学、笔体学、语义学等不同方面的文体特征也可以为法律文本的分析提供明确的方向。本文从文体学角度出发，研究英语法律语篇特征与翻译策略。本文共分为六章：第一章对本文的研究背景和研究目标进行简要介绍；第二章是关于文体学、法律文件、法律英语翻译的文献综述；第三章从词汇学，语法学，笔体学方面阐述法律英语的文本特征；第四章提出法律文本翻译的基本原则为准确、规范和通顺；第五章中，按照法律文本的不同类型，即规范性法律文件，国际贸易合同，租赁合同，探索翻译策略；第六章是本文的结论。

关键词：法律英语；文体学；翻译；语篇特征

Abstract

With the development of economic globalization, especially after China joined the World Trade Organization and launched the “Belt and Road”, the demand for China’s opening up has grown rapidly. However, in the process of opening up to the outside world, the correct and accurate translation of English legal documents plays a vital role in international exchanges. Translation is a conversion between two languages, involving the original author and the translator, so it naturally involves the style of both, that is, the stylistic issue. The relevant research on stylistic features in different aspects of language like lexicology, grammar, phonology and graphology and semantics also provide a clear direction in the analysis of legal discourse. This paper mainly explores the characteristics of English legal discourse and translation strategies from the perspective of stylistics. It is divided into six chapters: the first chapter gives a brief introduction to the research background and research objectives; the second chapter gives literature review of stylistics, legal documents and legal English translation; the third chapter expounds the characteristics of English legal discourse from the aspects of lexicology, grammar and graphology; the fourth chapter presents three basic principles of translation: accuracy, standardization, smoothness,; in the fifth chapter，legal English translation strategies are explored in the process of analyzing the different types of legal texts: prescriptive legal documents, international trade contracts, and rental agreements; the sixth chapter is the conclusion of this paper.

Key Words: legal English; stylistics; translation; features of discourse

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 3

3 Stylistic Features of English legal discourse 5

3.1 Lexical features 5

3.2 Grammatical features 7

3.3 Graphological Features 8

4 Principles of Legal English Translation 9

4.1 Accuracy 9

4.2 Standardization 10

4.3 Smoothness 11

5 Translation of various legal discourse 13

5.1 Prescriptive Legal Documents 13

5.2 International Trade Contract 13

5.3 Rental Agreement 15

6 Conclusion 16

References 17

Acknowledgements 19

A Study on Features and Translation of English Legal Discourse from the Perspective of Stylistics

1 Introduction

In recent years, the demand for China’s opening up has increased rapidly, especially after China’s accession to WTO and the development of the Belt and Road. Yet, in the process of opening up, it can be seen that correct and accurate translation of English legal documents play a vital role in foreign trade. Translation and trade policy uncertainty does affect export decisions (Feng amp; Li amp; Swenson 2017). Such demand for interpreting foreign-related legal documents brings opportunity to study features and translation of English legal discourse from the perspective of stylistics.

Stylistics is a branch of linguistics which studies style in a scientific and systematic way concerning the manners of different varieties of language at different levels, which includes conversation, news report, science and technology as well as legal discourse. Actually, translation is the conversion between two languages, involving the original author and the translator, thus naturally involving the style of the original author and the translator (田起梅，2014). At the same time, stylistic features in different aspects like lexicology, grammar, phonology and graphology and semantics can also provide a clear direction of the analysis of legal discourse (张德禄，张国，张淑杰，胡永近，2016). So, it is important to study translation from the perspective of stylistics.

Scholars all over the world have explored the features of legal documents from various perspectives. For example, archaisms, technical terms and loan words are frequently found in legal documents (Cui, 2017). Lengthy sentences and passive voice are another feature Valentina Stepanova (2015) has mentioned. However, there are very few documents that study the translation of English legal discourse, let alone from the perspective of stylistics. Still, documents and works worth learning can be discovered. Deviation of legal English from the perspective of stylistics (郑艳阳，武守信，2018) offers the current situation of such deviation from different aspects like historical deviation, deviation of pronunciation, lexical deviation and graphological deviation. Translation strategies for legal terms (时宇娇，2019) gives ideas about the translation of vocabulary of legal discourse. Some skills should be acquired such as literal translation and free translation. At the same time, contextualizing legal discourse and having a good command of law and culture in English countries are basic requirements for interpreting legal discourse (Zheng amp; Wu 2008). Considering those documents about law, translation and stylistics, it is possible to study features and translation of English legal discourse from the perspective of stylistics.

This paper analyzes the features and translation of legal discourse from the perspective of stylistics, with the aim of exploring English legal discourse, thus deepening the understanding of legal English and providing ideas for legal English translation, reducing the unnecessary misunderstanding in the process of opening up.

2 Literature Review

According to Zhou (2014), the stylistics that originated in rhetoric was a novel and ancient subject. The ancient rhetoric, which can be traced back to the early days of China and the West, has a history of thousands of years. The novelty lies in its current stage of development. Modern stylistics began to develop rapidly in the 1960s and 1980s, but not like other disciplines, so far their definition and scope of research are still under discussion and development. Generally speaking, stylistics is a combination of “style” and “linguistics”, and it can be simply defined as “the linguistic study of stylistics” (Cao, 2018). From this definition, the focus of stylistics is “style”. Due to the diversity of stylistic styles, the definition of stylistics is still vague. Attenborough (2014) thinks that as a discipline, stylistics does not function as an autonomous domain on its own, but it can be applied to an understanding of literature and journalism as well as linguistics. That is to say, stylistics is a study of the changes in the use of language and is related to all kinds of discourse including legal discourse.

Legal discourse is the carrier and embodiment of law. And the law is the product of the state. It is promulgated by the the ruling class (the dominant class in politics, economy, and ideological form), with the purpose of ruling and managing the state after a certain legislative procedure. The law is the embodiment of the will of the ruling class and the instrument of state rule. Legal documents can be divided into normative legal documents and non-normative legal documents. Normative legal documents, such as codes, are universally binding. Non-normative legal documents, such as judgments, are binding only on individual cases. Legal documents can also be classified into the public law and the private law. The public law involves the government directly. It defines a person’s rights and obligations in relation to the government (Liu, 2007). The private law is also called civil law which determines a person’s legal rights and obligations in many kinds of activities that involve other people. The public law includes the criminal law, the constitutional law, the international law and the administrative law. The private law includes the contract, the commercial law, the tort law, the property law, the inheritance law, the family law and the corporation law.

In a narrow sense, stylistics, according to Leech, refers to literary stylistics, a discipline that studies the linguistic features of a particular author or the particular expression of his work. It can be seen that literary stylistics focuses more on literary texts, while legal texts, as one of the non-literary texts, are considered to be relatively fixed in expression. Therefore, the stylistic study of non-literary texts is relatively less than the stylistic study of literary texts. As Tian (2014) holds that the relationship between literary language and non-literary language is not absolute but relative. And it can be regarded as a violation of convention or expression paradigm. The only difference is the degree of deviation from the expression paradigm. British scholar Jean Boase-Beier (2014) has constructed a research method of translation stylistics, which explores the role of stylistics and the choice of stylistic re-creation from the perspective of readers and translators. It believes that non-literary translation can follow the optimal relevance principle.