A Study on the Practice of Legislation Translation: the Medical Care Act

• Main Authors: LI, YUN-HUI, 李芸慧
• Other Authors: HU, Pi-Chan
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/jz7kc8

碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 跨文化研究所翻譯學碩士在職專班 === 107 === 　Translation is a bridge for cross-cultural communication. Since different fields have their own terminologies and linguistic habits, English for specific purposes translation has become an important medium to convey messages. In particular, amidst English for specific purposes, legal translation is the toughest one. As law not only has a special format, but different countries have different norms, different legal systems, and cultures and it is mandatory and binding. 　Taking the Medical Care Act as an example, this study aims to understand the practical difficulties in translating Taiwanese legislation in English. First, collect and review Chinese and Western legal translation literature, explain the criteria of legal translation and the translation of laws and regulations; then, sum up the principles of legal translation claimed by scholars: accuracy, consistency, equivalence, legal knowledge, and bilingual knowledge. Second, recognize the historical origins of the law, the evolution of the legislation, and the current contents of the Medical Care Act. Finally, the important principles mentioned above are used; also, the four concepts of translation quality assessment model: field, mode, tenor, and genre are supplemented to explore the practical challenges of the Medical Care Act. 　The results showed that the translation of the Medical Care Act does not conform to the most important principles of legal translation which are accuracy, consistency, and equivalence. This study discusses the problems found in the Act which includes inaccurate word choices, inconsistent word uses, syntactic errors, and typos. These errors are divided into lexical, legal, syntactic, punctuation and others. However, possible factors such as the lack of basic legal knowledge of the translators, and the absence of a bilingual glossary for reference are also pointed out. Thus, the following suggestions are proposed: (1) Organize a specific legislation translation unit; (2) cultivate professional legal translators; (3) establish a legal bilingual corpus.