Abstract:

Legislative texts set the standards for the social behavior of people and stipulate the evidence necessary for judging illegal behaviors. Legislative texts, as normative texts among many legal texts, are of great significance for establishing social norms. The language in legislative texts is part of a precise legal language system, which is highly professional, formal, normative, logical, and rigorous. Among the numerous translations of legal texts, the translation of legislative texts is of universal academic research value. Based on adaptation theory and the translation perspective of the theory, this study takes Tort Law of the People’s Republic of China, which is closely related to civil rights, is of relatively greater academic reference value, as the corpus and all of the translation examples are selected from the website http://www.pkulaw.com. Using the research methods of example analysis and translation criticism under the guidance of adaptation theory, this article discusses the Chinese-English translation of legislative texts, and explores ways of applying the three compliance strategies of “form adaptation to meaning” “part adaptation to the whole” and “selection adaptation to the intention” in legal translation in the hope that the analysis will provide some guidance to the translation of legal texts, particularly legislative texts.

Keywords: adaptation theory; translation perspective of adaptation theory; translation strategies for adaptability; legislative texts; Tort Law of the People’s Republic of China; legal English

摘要：

立法文本为人们设定了社会行为标准，同时也规定了判定违法行为的依据。作为众多法律文本中的规范性文本，立法文本具有显著的社会规范功能。立法文本中的语言属于严密的法律语言体系，具有很强的专业性、正式性、规范性、逻辑性和严谨性。在众多法律文本的翻译中，立法文本的翻译具有普遍的学术研究价值。 本文以顺应论及顺应论翻译观为理论指导，选取与公民权益息息相关并具有较高学术参考价值的《中华人民共和国侵权责任法》北大法宝英译本为语料，通过例证分析与翻译批评的方法，在顺应论翻译观的理论指导下，探讨立法文本汉英翻译“形式顺应意义”“局部顺应整体”“选择顺应意图”三大顺应性策略在翻译过程中的具体适用，以期为法律文本尤其是立法文本的翻译提供些许借鉴。

关键词: 顺应论, 顺应论翻译观, 顺应性翻译策略, 立法文本, 中华人民共和国侵权责任法, 法律英语