Abstract:

The translation of legal texts is an extremely complex communication activity across languages, cultures, and legal systems, and always involves the participants’ selection, as well as the adaptation of and interaction with social, cultural, and cognitive factors. Based on an overview of previous research on context theory, this study proposes the multidimensional context adaptation of legal text translation, and discusses the concrete application of this theoretical framework in the translation of legal texts in detail. According to multidimensional contextual adaptation theory, the success or failure of the translation of a legal text depends largely on the translator’s adaptive choices in the context of cultural globalization, which means that translators must actively adapt to all the elements related to language selection, such as the language context, the cultural context, the language users, the physical world, the psychological world, and the social world, and must select the best target language in the dynamic translation process to reproduce the semantic connotations and legal cultural information contained in the original text effectively, and to achieve dual equivalence between the original text and the target text in terms of the language function and the legal function. The present study shows that multidimensional context adaptation provides a relatively complete theoretical framework for the study of the translation of legal texts, and is also significant in terms of guiding the evaluation of the quality of translations and translation practice in legal texts.

Keywords: legal text translation; contextual adaptation theory; multidimensional; functional equivalence

摘要：

法律文本翻译是一种极其复杂的跨语言、跨文化、跨法系的交际活动，此过程始终贯穿着参与者对社会、文化、认知等因素的选择、顺应与互动。本研究在综观前人语境理论研究的基础上，提出了法律文本翻译的多维语境顺应论，并较为详细地探讨了该理论框架在法律文本翻译中的具体运用。多维语境顺应论认为，法律文本翻译的成败在很大程度上取决于文化全球化背景下译者的适应性选择。译者必须能动地顺应语言语境、文化语境以及语言使用者、物理世界、心理世界和社交世界等和语言选择相关的全部要素，在动态的翻译过程中选择最佳的译入语，才能有效地再现原文的语义内涵和法律文化信息，实现原文和译文在语言功能和法律功能上的双重对等。本研究表明，多维语境顺应论为法律文本的翻译研究提供了一个较为完整的理论框架，同时对法律文本翻译质量评估及翻译实践同样具有一定的指导意义。

关键词: 法律文本翻译, 语境顺应, 多维, 功能对等