ENHANCING LEGAL CULTURAL SOFT POWER: FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF TRANSLATING CHINESE LAWS AND REGULATIONS
Dong Xiaobo & Hu Bo
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION
A. The Historical Process of Modern China’s Laws and Regulations Translation
B. The Transition of the Significance of China’s Laws and Regulations Translation
C. The Status Quo of the Research on China’s Laws and Regulations Translation
II. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: NORM THEORY
III. VIOLATION OF NORMS IN CHINA’S LAWS AND REGULATIONS TRANSLATION AND ANALYSIS OF THEIR REASONS
A. Not Well-formed Working Mechanism
B. Inadequate Cultivation of Interdisciplinary Legal Translation Talents
C. Unsystematic and Unsustainable Standardization Work
D. Not Sound Integration of Translation Practice and Research
IV. COUNTERMEASURES FOR THE VIOLATION OF NORMS IN CHINA’S TRANSLATION OF LAWS AND REGULATIONS
A. Strengthening the Project Management of Laws and Regulations Translation
B. Reinforcing Cultivation of Interdisciplinary Legal Translation Talents
C. Highlighting Continuous Standardization Work
D. Advancing Theoretical Research and Its Application
V. CONCLUSION
Over 40 years of China's reform and opening-up has witnessed a process of transition from passive to active translation of the laws and regulations. From the 1980s to the entry into the WTO, China mainly introduced the achievements of legal system construction to the foreigners and it was also a process of relatively passive adaptation to the international rules. From the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, gradual improvement and completion have taken place in building the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics. As a national strategy, Chinese culture 'going global' also has been put forward. Being an indispensable part of China's rule of law culture, laws and regulations are the important achievements of China's modernization of the rule of law. It is also necessary for China's laws and regulations to actively go global, contributing China's experience and wisdom of the rule of law to the world, developing China's rule of law image and enhancing China's cultural soft power. As more and more local governments also joined in regulations and rules translation, translation norms have to be paid more attention to. Under the guidance of norm theory of western descriptive translation studies, much violation of translation norms can still be found in current legal translation, for instance, not well-formed working mechanism, inadequate cultivation of interdisciplinary legal translation talents, unsystematic and unsustainable standardization work, and the separation of translation practice and research. While actively translating laws and regulations, China should also actively highlight and join in the standardization of legal translation. Targeting at the existing problems, the corresponding countermeasures have been proposed to facilitate the formation of complete and orderly translation norms.A. The Historical Process of Modern China's Laws and Regulations TranslationAfter the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, two publishing houses including Foreign Languages Press and New Century Publishing House specialized in translating Chinese classical books into foreign languages and about 300 books of 43 foreign languages were published from October 1949 to 1965, of which books on laws were very limited.Since the reform and opening-up in 1978, western laws and law books in large volume were introduced into China and at the same time China's laws and regulations were also gradually translated into foreign languages for overseas readers to better get to know about China's modernization of the rule of law. In the initial stage, translation of the laws and regulations were relatively scarce in China. Originally, the translation of Chinese laws was mostly organized by the Commission of Legislative Affairs of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China. For example, there were two English versions of the Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China adopted on September 10, 1980 at that time. One was published by the Foreign Languages Press in 1982, and the other was compiled by the Commission of Legislative Affairs of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China and then published by the Foreign Languages Press in 1987. In 1985, for the first time, the Commission of Legislative Affairs of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China officially launched the translation of laws, and finally published two volumes including The Laws of the People's Republic of China (1979-1982) and The Laws of the People's Republic of China (1983-1986), and until 2012 it has presided over the translation of 230 laws including The Constitution of the People's Republic of China, and also published 22 successive books of English version of The Laws of the People's Republic of China.According to some articles published in the Chinese Translators Journal (originally called Translators Communication), an authoritative journal on translation in China at the beginning of the 1980s, the English version of The Constitution of the People's Republic of China newly adopted on December 4, 1982 was simultaneously released along with the Chinese version, and the team of translation was comprised of experts of Chinese and overseas legal experts and domestic translators, also including the translators from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Languages Press. After several rounds of revision and polishing, the English version was finally published by the Foreign Languages Press in 1983. In addition, some nongovernmental organizations, mainly including some media and publishing houses, also actively translated China's laws into English at that time, such as China Daily, Beijing Review, Law Press, and other presses, to publicize China's laws to the world.In the late 1980s, the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China (hereinafter referred to as the Legislative Affairs Office) also launched the translation of executive regulations, and sorted out and compiled Laws and Regulations of the People's Republic of China Governing Foreign-related Matters (1949-1990), and then it was published by China Legal Publishing House in 1991. From that time on, it became a routine work for the Legislative Affairs Office to compile the latest laws and regulations concerning foreign-related matters every year. Up to 2011, a series of 21 books on Laws and Regulations of the People's Republic of China Governing Foreign-related Matters had been compiled by the Legislative Affairs Office.After the entry into the WTO in 2001, China's communication with the world was becoming increasingly frequent. In accordance with the requirement of the WTO, it is a must for every member country to translate its laws into English to improve its judiciary and executive clarity. Then, translating laws had turned into a vital tool for China's participation in government affairs and information publicity, to help overseas persons in China to be more familiar with China's legal construction, and to alleviate international trade conflict and friction. As a result, the work of laws and regulations translation was increasing from then on. Prior to 2001, it was solely in 1999 that China submitted 180 English versions of laws and executive regulations to the working party on the accession of China.Up till 2002, the translation of laws and regulations was mostly finished at national level. In order to meet the demands of entry into the WTO, more and more local governments should actively participate in the regulations and rules translation. In 2003, the General Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China issued and promulgated the Notice of Work on the English Translation and Review of Executive Regulations, which specified the work responsibility, time limitation, organization and funds for translation and review, and also standardized the work procedure. Most importantly, the notice also pressed the local governments and their departments to be responsible for the translation and review of their issued regulations.After the notice was released, legislative offices from about 28 provinces, autonomous regions and province-level municipalities have established organizations of translation and review of local regulations and rules with professional and full-time staff, and legislative offices from about 18 larger municipal governments also joined the same work, for instance, Nanjing, Suzhou, Xuzhou and Wuxi of Jiangsu Province, to name a few.As a matter of fact, prior to the promulgation of this notice, Shanghai municipal government, as a forerunner, had launched the translation of local regulations and rules earlier, which could be dated back to 1980s. For example, during the period from 1988 to 1996, under the cooperation with the Shanghai Committee of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, the Legislative Affairs Office of Shanghai Municipal People's Government altogether consecutively translated and published four books entitled Regulations and Rules of Shanghai Municipality Governing Foreign-related Matters, consisting of all the regulations and rules concerning foreign matters issued in these 8 years.The year of 2005 witnessed the beginning of translation and review work of local regulations and rules in Jiangsu Province, led by the Legislative Affairs Office of People's Government of Jiangsu Province. The Legislative Affairs Office has held provincial sessions for many times to discuss the existing problems in translation, and also invited experts of legal translation from the General Office of the State Council to give them some professional advice and guidance. With the concerted efforts, the members of translation and review group have completed the English translation of over 100 local regulations and rules of Jiangsu Province. Both the Chinese and English versions of local regulations and rules are publicized through websites and printing.All in all, 40 years since the reform and opening-up policies implemented in 1978 has seen the rapidly increasing need of China's laws and regulations translation. Originally starting from the country level, this work has shifted to the provincial and municipal level, and a growing number of personnel, organizations and offices have devoted to the translation work to show China's achievements in reform and opening-up and promoting the rule of law. B. The Transition of the Significance of China's Laws and Regulations TranslationThe significance of China's laws and regulations translation is changing along with the times. Considering the historical process of China's development, we may say that on the whole, it can be divided into two distinct phases, namely, the relatively passive phase and the highly active phase.For one thing, the relatively passive phase lasts from the reform and opening-up policies carried out in 1978 to China's accession into the WTO in 2001. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, it established diplomatic relation with relatively few countries. In the world's eyes, China was an old, backward and mysterious country, far from the world's civilization. In the initial stage of reform and opening-up since 1978, an increasing number of foreigners rushed into China to invest in commerce and make business trade within China. They were eager to get to know about China's laws and regulations to avoid commercial friction and conflict and safeguard their interests. To meet the basic requirement of the reform and opening-up, translation played an important part in transmitting information and legal culture to the foreigners in China.As a new nation lagging behind the developed countries in the development of the rule of law, Chinese were actively devoting themselves to exploring how to govern their country following the rule of law pathway. During the 1990s, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), China launched an uphill journey to develop law-based governance. Laws and regulations in large number are formulated to guarantee the whole country running under the rule of law with an aim to build a socialist law system with Chinese characteristics. This long-lasting reform in the rule of law primarily started from the field of Chinese-style market economy, and China made a series of prominent achievements in civil law and economic law. In order to be a member of the WTO, China not only had to formulate its laws and regulations according to the international rules to meet the requirement of the world, but also had to translate them into English to make China better known by the world. As the rule of law has become a requisite tool for governing modern countries, internationalization of the rule of law is also an inevitable tendency for any relatively later development in countries. In this process, translation is a bidirectional action which is not only a window for the outside world to look into China, but also a bridge for China to go to the world arena. By and large, this was a passive phase in which China was learning from the world and tried to catch up with the developed countries.Not until 2011 did the country declare that it had initially finished building a socialist law system with Chinese characteristics. We have to admit that the process was also accomplished within the background that China was more open to the world and gradually gained its position in the world along with its rapidly advancing comprehensive national strength, as it is known to us that the GDP of China had surpassed that of Japan ranking as the world's No.2 economy in 2010. With the economical growth, China gradually gained influence and discourse power in the world arena, marching forward to the center of the world platform. And more and more countries diverted their attention to the development of China and wanted to attain more cooperative opportunities with China.For another thing, the highly active phase starts from the convening of the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012. In the same year, white papers of Judicial Reform in China (both in Chinese and English versions) were promulgated by the Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, to actively show the achievements of China's reform in judicial system since the founding of New China in 1949, and especially since the reform and opening-up policies were introduced in 1978. This was a critical moment representing that China was turning its relatively passive attitude to actively show its national image to the outside world.As the strategy of Chinese culture 'going global' was initially put forward at the beginning of the 21st Century, it also embraced its new phase after the holding of the 18th CPC National Congress. In 2013, China's President Xi Jinping proposed the Belt and Road Initiative to promote and expand trade among the countries along the Belt and Road and develop the economic cooperation partnership relation, thereby building a community of shared future featured by mutual political reliance, economic integration and cultural tolerance. Times is constantly changing as China is shouldering more responsibilities in the world. And China is also actively proposing some plans and contributing its wisdom to build the new international order and participating in global governance.It is worth noting that the law-based governance of China, for the first time, was exactly the main theme of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee in 2014. After this session, 7 foreign language versions of the Documents of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, was compiled and published by the Central Compilation & Translation Press to the world in 2015. It had fully demonstrated that the Party and national cause had embarked on a new stage, and China was increasingly attaching importance to building a rule of law country image to the world. More importantly, it was only by active translation and publicity that could we really enable the international world to know the basic ideal and strategic plan of our comprehensively advancing the law-based governance of China.Especially when China has entered into a new era, translation, in particular, has been endowed unprecedented significance. At the 19th CPC National Congress on October 18, 2017, President Xi Jinping announced to the world that socialism with Chinese characteristics had entered a new era. A new era also witnesses the new phase of the rule of law in China. After so many years of endeavoring, with brand new rule of law ideal of logic power, sound rule of law systems and fresh rule of law practice, China's rule of law in the new era has unfolded to the world the distinctive enchantment of Chinese experience, approach and path. As President Xi Jinping pointed out, socialism with Chinese characteristics entering a new era means that the path, the theory, the system, and the culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics had kept developing, which offers a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence; and it offers Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to solve the problems facing mankind.That is exactly the point where translation should undertake its historical and glorious mission. Considering the perspective of culture communication, the discourse system of one country's legal field can only gain understanding, support and resonance from the foreign public through international communication. Translation is just like a messenger eliminating the cultural gap and linking the disconnected channel in the past, and is nowadays also helping a country to win the discourse power in the world, thereby establishing China's rule of law national image in the world and contributing Chinese wisdom and approach to global governance. As a cross genealogy of law and interlingual interpersonal behavior, China's legal translation, including translating legal ideas and thoughts, legal languages and cultures and legal norms and legal texts, is a pivotal method for our legal discourse system going global. As the indispensable part of China's legal discourse, laws and regulations show what China has achieved in the rule of law and represents the results that China has gained in so many years' development, which can also be a kind of experience for the countries from the third world to draw from.As President Xi Jinping pointed out in his report at the 19th CPC National Congress, we will improve our capacity for engaging in international communication so as to tell China's stories well, present a true, multi-dimensional, and panoramic view of China, and enhance our country's cultural soft power. It must be admitted that improving our capacity in international communication of laws and regulations is precisely contributing to enhancing our country's cultural soft power. Therefore, emphasis should be highlighted on the importance of laws and regulations translation to promote Chinese legal discourse going global, which should be uplifted to the height of an important national strategy. And China, first and last, should also adopt a highly active attitude towards publicizing its law culture to the world. C. The Status Quo of the Research on China's Laws and Regulations TranslationProsperous translation research always comes with prosperous translation industry. Contemporary translation field is now on the road to industrialization which can also in turn bring social vigor and resources to the translation. Therefore, translation's participation in social production should be strengthened. It is common sense that theory comes from practice, and the widened and expanded practice is sure to stimulate the thinking of theory and blaze a new trail for theoretical research.Comparatively speaking, western translation theory developed in a more diversified and systematic way than that of China because they had a much more mature translation industry. A variety of western schools and theories of translation began to be translated into China from the 1980s, widening Chinese horizon of research on translation. However, the introduced theories were mostly inspired and summarized based on literary translation practice. Actually, the initial translation practice within China was also chiefly focused on the literary field, and legal translation started relatively late.In the 1980s, such scarce was the need of translating laws that the related theoretical research was also a rarity. During this period, only several authors and their articles could be found in the Translators Communication, and there were few monographs on legal translation prevalent for others' reference. And the only articles could be found mainly probed into the translation of words and especially how to translate the legal terms with Chinese characteristics into English. Meanwhile, there were few scholars engaging in the study of forensic linguistics.In western countries, however, a large group of scholars, such as Conley, O'Barr, Gibbons, Trosberg, Solan, Shuy, Bhatia, etc., had started early to do research on the legal language and gained numerous achievements in various fields in forensic linguistics. In 1995, the International Association of Forensic Linguists was founded along with its professional journal Forensic Linguistics emerging. And a variety of associations including forensic linguistics, legal translation and court interpretation etc. in many countries were also established in succession.Starting from 1990s to this day and age, research on legal translation in China was in the process of gradual expansion, which can be by and large divided into four phases on the whole. From 1992 to 1999, to begin with, it was still in its embryo stage. According to some statistics, less than ten articles on legal translation were published annually in domestic journals. In 1999, in the second place, there appeared a slight upward tendency in legal translation research because the Amendment to the Constitution of the People's Republic of China of 1999 was adopted at the Second Session of the 9th National People's Congress and was promulgated for implementation. It was specified in this amendment that China would promote the rule of law and establish a socialist rule of law country, which had triggered Chinese scholars' research on legal translation to better introduce the situation of rule of law development to foreign scholars. During this time, China is also preparing to join the WTO, which required that China had to pay more attention to the international rules and to catch up with the international pace of rule of law. Since the accession into the WTO from 2001, in the third place, China had to expand its legal communication with the outside world, leading to much increase in law and regulation translation and it is concerning theoretical research. After 2002, there was a substantial increase in legal translation and about 20 articles were published annually. At the same time, universities and colleges in China also paid special attention to the teaching reform and legal English and legal translation research gained more and more popularity. From 2010, in the fourth place, research on legal translation grew rapid because law-based governance in China had reached a new point. New thoughts and ideas on the rule of law, like comprehensively advancing the law-based governance of China, led Chinese people to highlight the complete construction of laws and regulations system. Inevitably, translation and its concerning research prosper with the formulation of laws and regulations in large numbers. What is more, following the policy of enrollment expansion of postgraduate students, master's program of legal translation, especially master of translation and interpreting, began to be established in a growing number of colleges and universities, which also promoted the related research on legal translation.Generally speaking, research on legal translation so far mainly focuses on the micro and meso level of legal language, such as, translation strategy, translation technique, translation principle, and translation approach, etc., which are normally the core research topic and most authors tried to summarize some general rules for legal translation by pointing out the common errors and misunderstanding in the translation practice. In other words, there is still much room for the research transferring into the macro level of legal language. By and large, three obvious phases of changes can generally be found in the specific content of domestic research on legal translation. From 1992 to 2000, the articles primarily discussed legal translation from the linguistic level, especially the words, or rather, legal terms. This phase of translation research was characterized by the reflection of translation experience, fault finding and comparison between Chinese words and English expressions, and the translation approach and strategy were normally the focus. From 2001 to 2009, more research deeply probed into the specific translation of words and expressions of laws in China. Meanwhile, with the increasing of legal translation practice, more translation cases and samples were available to the scholars for analysis. In addition, after the introduction of western translation theories into China, more and more scholars, not solely confined to the linguistic level, were inspired by western theories and tried to apply them, such as text typology, functional equivalence, skopos theory, and cross-cultural perspective, etc., to guide legal translation, and their attention was also shifted from legal terms to textual level and text style, which further widened the research horizon to a high level. From 2010 to now, there is also a growing application of western theories to legal translation research, such as relevance theory, cooperative principle, etc. Besides, with an increasing number of universities and colleges running new major of legal English or legal translation, more attention was paid to the macro level, that is, the legal translation studies and discipline development gradually caught scholars' eyes. And the translation of laws and regulations was in an unprecedented demand compared to that of in the past. The prosperous legal translation industry was also in great demand for related talents. As a result, such words as interdisciplinary talents cultivation gradually became a heated and central topic for cultivating legal English and legal translation talents. Meanwhile, with the rising of translation corporations and enterprises, a large number of researches entitled translation practice and translation report have emerged. Translation work is gradually considered as projects involving many personnel and procedures, which need much more cooperation and coordination than before. Consequently, professionalization and project management of translation has also been introduced into legal translation research. On the other hand, it was in this stage that legal terminology translation had become the key point for academic research. Along with the normalization and standardization of terminology put forward in all fields of natural and social sciences, the standardization of legal terminology translation also gradually become the more often talked theme in legal translation studies, with their major concern centering on the standardization of legal terminology in national laws and regulations or local regulations and rules translation. It is safe to say that standardization is also new and ever-developing research worthy of much deeper attention.All in all, academic research in legal translation thrives along with many factors, including China's reform and opening-up policies, the prosperous legal translation industry, the much needed interdisciplinary talents cultivation and active legal translation teaching reform in universities and colleges. Definitely, more and more devotion to translation practice will enrich related theoretical research, and interdisciplinary talents cultivation, as a new research field, also needs a more solid theoretical foundation to gain smooth and sound development.
II. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: NORM THEORY
By norm, according to Black's Law Dictionary, it refers to 'First, a model or standard accepted (voluntarily or involuntarily) by society or other large group, against which society judges someone or something. Second, an actual or set standard determined by the typical or most frequent behavior of a group.' In its definition, the norm is explained in two levels, that is, the society and the group, with the central word standard. In effect, as an evolutionary process, both the society and the group can gradually form its own standard of action. By standard, in accordance with Black's Law Dictionary, it refers to 'First, a model accepted as correct by custom, consent, or authority. Second, a criterion for measuring acceptability, quality or accuracy.' Both definitions of norm and standard can be references for us to have some thoughts on translation. In reality, the study of translation is always in progress, from the initial linguistic level to later societal and cultural level, which is so-called cultural turn in western translation theory. In other words, as a human communication behavior, translation is indispensably influenced by the custom, ideology or authority of the certain society. Nowadays, translation work, following the prosperous translation industry, is always done within a group or organization rather than only finished by an individual. As the translation industry itself grows mature, the group always voluntarily formulates its criterion or standard for measuring the acceptability, quality or accuracy of translation. All in all, norms of translation can be considered from different levels, or rather, from both the micro and macro level. Such is also the evolution process of the concentration of translation theory.Actually, norm is a central concept of descriptive translation studies. Representative western scholars like Gideon Toury, Andrew Chesterman, and Theo Hermans, have systematically expounded the norm theory in translation studies. The late 1970s saw the great transition from the prescriptive to descriptive studies of norms in translation. And the units studied ascended from lexical and sentence level to textual and super-textual level, and from linguistic norms to the social and societal norms transcending linguistic category.In his Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, Gideon Toury considered translation as a norm-governed activity. As translation inevitably involves two languages and two cultural traditions, the socio-cultural constraints Toury called norms. In terms of the process of translation event, particularly the decision-making process, Toury distinguishes two larger groups of norms applicable to translation: preliminary versus operational, involving the selection of text before translation, translation policy and translation decision during the translation, but he did not explore the theoretical side of the concept of the norm further.Different from Toury's norm theory, limited to the process of translation, Andrew Chesterman widened the scope of norm theory to social norms, ethical norms and technical norms. Social norms mainly coordinate interpersonal relationship, ethical norms refer to the criterion of values that translators should observe, such as thoroughness, truth, trusting and understanding, and technical norms mean that translators should meet the expectancy of the readers and comply with the mainstream translation tradition of the target language. Based on Toury's research, Chesterman studied norm theory in a more detailed way and put forward his own set of norm theory, consisting of product or expectancy norms and professional norms. Actually, the expectancy norms, as a matter of fact, similar to Toury's preliminary and operational norms, specifically refer to the influencing factors such as translation tradition, discourse convention, and economic and ideological considerations. Moreover, professional norms regulate the translation process itself, which can be further divided into three kinds, namely, the accountability norm, the communication norm, and the relation norm. The accountability norm is an ethical one, dealing with professional standards of integrity and thoroughness. The communication norm is a social one, implies that the translator should work to ensure maximum communication between the parties. The relation norm is a linguistic one, which deals with the relation between source text and target text, limited to the translation field. Chesterman proposed relevant similarity to take place of the traditional equivalence relation between the source and target text, with the aim of seeking optimal similarity for translation mission.Theo Hermans, starting from the perspective of social system theory, attempted to overcome the limitation of the norms research and brought norms to a larger system. According to him, viewing translation as a social system may open up interesting perspectives. Hermans put forward self-reference and heteronomy. Seeking regularity and norms where self-reference really lies in is a must for translation studies itself. However, beyond translation system, translation has to be linked with other systems like ideology, society and culture. Self-reference of translation does not mean to remain rigid and stagnant but refers to the development of regularity of discipline, while heteronomy represents the openness and dynamics of translation studies. Generally speaking, Hermans argues that there are three levels of norms dominating translation, namely, cultural and ideological norms of society, translation norms of conceptual reconstruction of translatability, and the dominant text norms in the particular reader (or client) system.In general, norm theory in descriptive translation studies, especially Chesterman's classification of norms, has given us operational guidance for reflection on laws and regulations translation in China. Actually, we can study the norms of legal translation from different angles, such as horizontal and vertical level, or rather, micro (linguistic level) or macro (work mechanism management) level, or from the process of translation like preliminary phase, intermediate phase and post-translation phase.III. VIOLATION OF NORMS IN CHINA'S LAWS AND REGULATIONS TRANSLATION AND ANALYSIS OF THEIR REASONSEvery industry runs in accordance with its own norms and standardization. Certainly, norms are not built in one day but naturally evolve in a process, interfered by authority and being steered to the virtuous direction. Unavoidably, the thriving laws and regulations translation in China comes along with problems in its not long history of development. These problems appeared can be called a violation of norms in different aspects. As for the macro level of translation management, violation of communication norm, that is, poor coordination and cooperation between different departments normally can be found. As for micro level in translation itself, violation of accountability norm and relation norm in translators' ability, translation principle, translation quality and so on, also appears. With regard to the process of translation, violation of preliminary norms, such as the selection of the appropriate translators, always emerges, involving the cultivation of interdisciplinary talents, especially legal translation talents. And still, attention should be paid to the post-translation phase, for instance, the standardization work of legal translation and the handling of translation achievements or assets. With the development of new technology, especially the computer-aided translation, the technical norm is also a new topic for nowadays translation. In a word, different levels of violation of norms seem to be separate but are unified as a whole in a systematic way. A. Not Well-formed Working MechanismIn this day and age, the departments formulating laws and regulations themselves in China are also responsible for their translation. In other words, there are a number of departments and personnel, country level as well as local level, engaging in the laws and regulations translation. To be specific, as for the country's laws and matters concerning the laws, their translation work is organized and reviewed by departments of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China; as for the executive regulations promulgated by the State Council of the People's Republic of China, their translation work is organized and reviewed by the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council; and the translation of local regulations and rules of divisions and departments is organized and reviewed by themselves respectively. In other words, there are altogether at least three independent forces engaging in the translation work. For the country level, concerned departments have started laws and regulations translation over thirty years and accumulated adequate experience. With support from experts of the professional legal field and the renowned publishing houses, the translation quality can be largely secured. However, there can still be some violation of norms in law and regulation translation, especially the inconsistency of the use of terminology. More importantly, numerous problems might have emerged with the surging translation of local legislation.Normally, scarce communication, or violation of communication norm, is among the three forces. As a result, the use of terminology and the expression of concepts is hard to reach consensus precisely because there is a wide scope of laws and regulations in China, a large number of translators' participation, and many procedures involved, etc. Many departments and personnel will bring numerous problems to communication management, and the fact is that each department even fights his own battle. Different from the literary translation, which admits and invites multi versions of translation, legal translation seeks consistency and accuracy, and the controversy on translation should be unified into one authoritative version to safeguard its authority. Considering from the vertical point of view, the departments from country level are still not communicating enough well with that of the local level, which surely invites a series of problems, for instance, there is inevitable discrepancy of English translation concerning the legal terms between the upper-level legislation (superior legislation) and the lower-level legislation (inferior legislation). As the target readers are all foreigners, the inconsistency among different legal texts is sure to bring misunderstanding, even having a detrimental effect on the whole country's rule of law image.Furthermore, considering the horizontal point of view, although over 28 provinces, autonomous regions and province-level municipalities have devoted to regulations and rules translation, their working efficiency and translation quality vary from regions. In advanced regions, particularly for those started earlier in regulations and rules translation, they have, through years of practice, accumulated much experience and formed relatively standardized working procedure, and now are in a leading position in this field. However, for those set out comparatively backward, they are still in the exploration stage with many difficulties to overcome. Obviously, considering from a systematic work including forming a specialized team of translators and establishing a sound working procedure, violation of professional norms facing the translation of some local legislation are diversified, which can be normally summarized as follows.Firstly, there is an uneven level of professional working teams of translators. Currently, modes of translation are distinct from local departments. As previously mentioned, the translation of regulations and rules of local legislation is always done by its Legislative Affairs Office of the regional people's government. Noticeably, differences are the approaches adopted. Some recruit translators from the graduates of colleges and universities as their full-time staff, or even directly appoint staff of their own departments, due to limited funds and support, to finish the translation work. As legal translation is professional work, its quality cannot, without specialized experts' guidance, be secured. Others completely leave the tasks to the translation corporations and enterprises. As translation industry in China is also in its phase of initial development, the norms for the whole industry has not been well established, therefore, some translation corporations, free from strict supervision and short of professional translators, seek only for profits and still cannot really be responsible for the quality of translation. Still, others which are also of rarity, with adequate funds and support from local governments, have organized a relatively stable team of experts from universities, including professors of both law and foreign languages, specializing in regulations and rules translation.Certainly, a professional team can secure the quality and accuracy of the translation and a stable team can also guarantee the continuity of the whole translation work. As legal translation is systematic work, a changeable team, on the contrary, tends to bring much trouble. For instance, local regulations and rules are normally formulated according to the upper-level laws and regulations, translators not professional enough will not, when translating local regulations and rules, consult the already translated upper-level legislation, resulting in the discrepancy of terminology between lower-level legislation and upper-level legislation. In addition, the formulation of local regulations and rules is a systematic work, and there is also close relation between them. The consistency should also be guaranteed when we translate local regulations and rules. Inevitably, constantly changing translators will also disconnect the continuity of the translation of related regulations and rules, in other words, the same terminology might, caused by the knowledge and understanding of different translators, have different translation in related regulations and rules. Even in the same regulations or rules, there might be inconsistency for the certain terminology because of the poor communication among the team and bad procedural management of the whole translation work.Secondly, there is an uneven level of team management. Different from the past translation practice, modern translation is always characterized by heavy workload, team cooperation and short time limitation, etc. Since translation is no longer done by single-handed person, there should be good organization and coordination among the whole team. Considering the workload, certainly, the relatively less translation work could still be finished by individuals. However, in light of the increasing volume of local legislation, it is necessary to pay more attention to team management. Nowadays, much as some local legislative affairs offices have organized a work team, they do not manage it well and even there is no real cooperation and coordination between translators. Some finish the task without the procedure of proofreading and reviewing. There are only a few who can not only provide adequate money and professional translators but also have set up the formal translation management procedure.B. Inadequate Cultivation of Interdisciplinary Legal Translation TalentsLegal translation is oriented to the elite group which is of high quality and technical difficulty. Specifically speaking, legal translation serves the social upper-level groups such as lawyers, foreign invested enterprises, and import and export corporations, with extremely high requirement of the accuracy of translation. Certainly, accurate translation at the same time means relatively high technical difficulty. In a sense, legal translation talents are also elite groups in society. Legal translation is not only doing translation, but also translating laws. In other words, legal translators should be bilingual experts in cross disciplines, that is, linguistics, laws and translation.As the preliminary norms, selection of the proper translators is the top priority for laws and regulations translation. However, as a new field, legal translation and its talent cultivation are still in its initial stage because only a small fraction of universities and colleges have begun to give legal translation courses and few have established the related major and discipline in legal translation, in other words, the cultivation of interdisciplinary legal translation talents is also in its preliminary phase. Taking Jiangsu Province for example, there are altogether 134 universities and colleges within the whole province, of which only several comprehensive universities like Nanjing University, Southeast University, Nanjing Normal University and Soochow University offer the major of translation and only Nanjing Normal University, in particular, offers the teaching of legal translation. As translation discipline in China is also a new one with only a history of over 30 years, and it has not formed a system of its own and translation teaching is an only small part of the foreign languages education in China. Legal translation, as an interdisciplinary subject, is also a new discipline which needs more time to become mature. Starting later than other translation teachings for specific purposes, legal translation teaching is still confronted with basic problems such as what to teach and how to teach, without ripened answers. Correspondingly, there are also relatively fewer research results in the talents cultivation of legal translation and legal translation teaching.Currently, the problems facing the legal translation are various, including teaching practice being free from scientific guidance, the inappropriate arrangement of legal translation teaching content and courses leading to students' lack of professional knowledge of law and law culture, weak faculty failing to meet the requirement of the urgent needs, and the outdated teaching methods. All in all, the cultivation of legal translation talent is falling behind the practical legal translation practice. Those who are skilled at linguistics, translation and law at the same time are necessarily rare and precious ones. As translation is a cross-culture activity, legal translation is certainly a cross legal culture activity. Different from the Anglo-American law system, China is a country of continental law system and is also under the influence of traditional Chinese legal system. Although there are common things between the two law systems, more are the difference in distinct languages, terms and expressions. The ineligible is the translator who fails to understand the difference and master the knowledge of comparative law. It is a pity that cultivation of qualified legal translation talents is still in its elementary stage, and far falling behind market needs. Unavoidably, there have appeared much violation of norms in legal translation because the translators are short of knowledge of the law. C. Unsystematic and Unsustainable Standardization WorkStandardization invariably comes later than the prosperous industry. Such was also the case in the translation of laws and regulations. In general, the standardization of translation has way lagged behind what we have achieved in translating laws and regulations.Although the concerning departments started the laws and regulations translation from the late 1980s, they just released the standardization results in the 1990s. In 1998, the Department of Translation, Review and Foreign Affairs of Legislative Affairs Office formally published Legal Words and Expressions (Chinese & English): A Handbook for the Translation of Laws and Regulations of People's Republic of China. In 2005, it also compiled and printed Legal Structures: A Handbook for the Translation and Review of Regulations, but this handbook was not formally published and merely for internal references. Upon its publication and publicity, the handbook had become the authority guidance and the necessary reference book for the translators of translating local regulations and rules.Since the 2000s, the legislative affairs office of local governments also joined the standardization of translating regulations and rules. As the pioneer, the Department of Translation, Review and Foreign Affairs of Institute of Executive Legislative of Legislative Affairs Office of the People's Government of Shanghai Municipality also released its achievements in the standardization of regulations and rules translation. The standardized legal terms were released in the journal entitled Translating Regulations (not formally published, founded in 2002, as quarterly printing), in which there was a column named standardization of translation, as the core content. As the forerunner in translating regulations, Shanghai's standardization of translation also established certain authority, with its results reposted by the Legislative Affairs Office on its official website.Since the beginning of translating regulations and rules, the Legislative Affairs Office of the People's Government of Jiangsu Province also attached the importance of standardization. As far as standardization, the mechanism and the quality of translation are concerned, Jiangsu Province is now relatively in the lead throughout the country, and had been commended for several times by the State Council of the People's Republic of China. After over ten years' translation practice, it had become a voluntary consciousness for Jiangsu Province to launch the standardization. In order to secure the accuracy of translation to improve the quality, with the concerted efforts, the members of the translation group actively extracted the high-frequency terms and habitual use of structures from a large volume of translated texts. In 2018, the translation group compiled and printed its standardization achievements entitled Legal Terms and Structures: A Handbook for the Translation of Regulations and Rules of Jiangsu Province (not formally published). In this handbook, 3,000 habitual terms and 90 structures have been selected for translators' references, thereby becoming a handbook for those translating local regulations and rules.Although we have gained certain achievements in the standardization work, this accomplishment, however, on the whole, is unsystematic and unsustainable. For one thing, standardization itself should be systematic work. With translation merging in large scale and complication, merely dependent on the several translators with high capability is far not enough to meet the actual requirement. On the contrary, the work should be done in a project with overall planning, specific service program, qualified language resources and appropriate service forms. Under this circumstance, professional management is of paramount importance. Or rather, the standardization work of translation has been further expanded, from the micro level to the macro level. However, the current standardization is still confined to the linguistic level, far from the systematic requirement.For another thing, standardization itself should be sustainable work. From the national level, after the handbooks in 1998 and 2005 were released by the Legislative Affairs Office, there have been no other new results in the standardization up till now. As for the local endeavoring, the journal Translating Regulations compiled by Shanghai was also discontinued, and there have been no new achievements since 2011. Over ten years, great changes have taken places in China, and still ongoing is the laws and regulations translation. More and more departments and personnel have devoted to this field with an increasing number of laws and regulations being translated into English and publicized to the foreigners. On the one hand, laws and regulations run within the social environment which constantly changes with the times. Both national and local legislation have to respond to the social development and change in an active, flexible and rapid way. Times changes, and such is the repeal and amendment of laws and regulations which are out of fashion. Furthermore, more and more local governments have been entrusted the power of legislation. Relatively different from the central legislation of country level, the local legislation bears the value of relative independence, or rather, without running counter to the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, current laws and executive regulations, local legislation has the right to, in accordance with the specific situation and actual requirement of the local regions, autonomously handle local affairs and formulate regulations and rules featured by the local characteristics. As China is a large country, the situation and social development vary from one local region to another. With new laws and regulations emerging, their translation is also a nonstop work. In other words, the standardization should not be contemporary but permanent work along with the translation practice to secure the translation quality. D. Not Sound Integration of Translation Practice and ResearchFor a long time, the separation of practice and research exists in China's translation circle, leading to the ineffective application of the translation theory to translation practice. Up till now, scholars largely from the school of foreign languages and cultures of colleges and universities have devoted to the legal translation studies. Though some of them also engage in translation practice, as a matter of fact, more complex is the combination of legal translators, of which some are from translation corporations and some from the legislative affairs office of the local governments. To be specific, a lot of articles and books have talked about the principle of legal translation. And there are also articles discussing the principle of terminology translation. In these articles, the principles are always summarized by words, for example, normalization, accuracy, equivalence, consistency, and professionalism, etc. Certainly, these words are of conciseness and simplicity, which are suitable for being the principle of legal translation but far from concrete operational approaches. In practice, every translator has his own understanding of legal translation. Without academic training as scholars from universities, not every translator can really read these articles and strictly follow these principles. On the other hand, the practical translation is more complicated. China's written laws and regulations are various, for instance, as for the names, there are over 30 kinds in laws and executive regulations with diversified English translation. Different translators tend to chose different English words and expressions for even the same terminology. Currently, a situation of 'hundred schools of thoughts' has emerged in China's legal translation because there is short of unity in the translation of legal terms and sentences.At the same time, it is hard to form a systematic translation theory. As legal translation is a highly practical work, the current research mostly centers on translation principle, translation approach and translation strategy to directly serve the translation practice. Considering the current research results, the concerning theoretical research, comparatively speaking, was relatively weak and is worthy of being strengthened. Or rather, it is obvious that there is less research talking about the problems in legal translation from the translation theory. Theoretical research, solid or not, directly determines the development room and depth of the discipline. However, what we can find now mostly is the descriptive summary of translation examples or the explanation of the author's reflection. The lack of theoretical research gives neither a definite methodology nor clear aims for deep research on legal translation. Distinct from the literary translation, legal translation research should also have its own theoretical foundation with a distinctive style. IV. COUNTERMEASURES FOR THE VIOLATION OF NORMS IN CHINA'S TRANSLATION OF LAWS AND REGULATIONSAs the significance of laws and regulations translation has changed with the times from the passive to active part, legal translation itself is now not only representing the will of the country but also undertaking the mission of enhancing its cultural soft power and building a rule of law country image. From the 1980s, some foreign scholars, in particular, the American professional professors of studying China's laws, not only translated China's civil law but also diverted their attention to Chinese traditional legal culture. Gradual improvement in China's legal system attracted more attention from the world. In other words, western countries also joined in the translation of China's laws and regulations. As the dominant force leading the whole work of translation, based on its pivotal significance, we have to heighten our self-consciousness of subjectivity in securing the norms of translation as much as possible. Confronted with the violation of norms in current legal translation, the top priority for us is, under the guidance of norm theory, to re-examine the existing problems and try to give solutions in a systematic and complete manner, both from the macro and micro level, and comprehensively taking the whole process of translation into account within the social and cultural system. A. Strengthening the Project Management of Laws and Regulations TranslationTraditional translation with a simple form, out of cultural communication and academic publishing, etc., was usually finished by individuals, and the quality of translation solely depended on translator's capability and attainment. With the further development of economic globalization, there is a swiftly soaring tendency of translation service. In a sense, the so-called translation industry is emerging, serving more diversified industries. A variety of factors, including the increasing workload of translation, limited schedule, strict client requirement, and advanced translation technology, have led to the growing complication of translation work. Translation project management, which is of artistic, scientific and professional integration, has become a critical link in the whole process of translation precisely because it involves communication and interaction in multi-facets.Project is temporary work for creating distinctive products, service or achievements. Temporariness is characterized by, specifically, the definite starting and terminating points. The work itself is temporary, but the results are expected to generate lasting impact. Laws and regulations translation is also a temporary work, catering to the characteristics of a project, with time limitation. Due to the timeliness, some English versions of laws and regulations are always released simultaneously with their Chinese versions, while others lagging behind within a certain time period which lasts not too long. Project management is the process of application of knowledge, skills, tools and technology to project activity to meet its requirement. According to the logic relation, the whole process of project management can be classified into five stages, namely, project initiating, project planning, project executing, project controlling, and project closing. As a matter of fact, the executing and controlling phases are always intertwined and overlapped. Consequently, translation project management can generally be divided into four stages, that is, project initiating, project planning, project executing, and project closing. And the key factors in translation project management mainly include translation communication management, quality management, language assets management, and financial management.As for the laws and regulations translation, normally funded by the governments, it is slightly different from the work done by translation corporations seeking profits. The four stages can by and large be explained as follows: the phase of project initiating mainly contains the assessment of the project and selection of translators; the phase of project planning primarily contains the formulation of the time schedule, the distribution of workload, and the unification of the English expressions of key terminology; the phase of project executing chiefly contains keeping track of the quality of translation by sampling inspection; and the phase of project closing largely contains the reviewing and proofreading of the translated texts. For those who started late in translating local regulations and rules, project management is more of a mode of thinking which makes the whole translation normalized. Through procedural management, the translation was brought under control and supervision.In addition, translation communication management also implies to us that there is both horizontal and vertical communication between departments of different levels. With regard to the vertical communication, in order to avoid the discrepancy of English translation of legal terminology between upper-level legislation and lower-level legislation, there should be more communication among the legislative affairs offices of the country level and local level. For instance, the much-experienced experts of laws translation of national level can be regularly invited to give guidance on the local regulations and rules translation by symposium or training classes. The standardization work done by the country level should also be better publicized to the local level by smooth communication.With regard to the horizontal communication, especially referring to the local level, it involves wider scope including not only translators and translators, and translators and legislators within one translation group of a certain region, but also the communication between different regions. By project management, establishing communication mechanism is precisely the focal point for translators to secure the consistency of terms and expressions. Legal translation is not a simple process of information decoding, but an act of communication within the mechanism of the law. Communication between translators and legislators is increasingly important because nowadays legislation is becoming a more and more professional work. Complicated is the connotation and intention of the legislation texts with some necessary judicial interpretation sometimes. And the translation of local regulations and rules also are under the influence of legislation intention itself, upper-level legislation, and official translation tradition. During translation, the translators, being not members of the legislators, or without professional knowledge of laws, might fail to get the real intention and meaning of many regulations and rules. Therefore, receiving support from the legislation department seems to be a must. Finally, some local governments started the translation work of local regulations and rules earlier and others relatively late. The communication between regions should also be strengthened so that the late one can also learn from the early one to improve the wider communication and secure the consistency of translation between different regions.All in all, to establish the regular communication, exchange and coordination mechanism among departments is sure to greatly improve the development of China's translation cause. The project management of legal translation demands a comprehensive and complete way of thinking, considering from both the horizontal and vertical angle and from the whole process of translation, to establish a systematic mechanism to strengthen the communication norm and quality norm of the translation. B. Reinforcing Cultivation of Interdisciplinary Legal Translation TalentsAs President Xi Jinping pointed out, to participate in global governance, we need a host of professional talents who are not only familiar with the guidelines and policies of our Party and country but also are of global horizon, and can skillfully use foreign languages, get to know the international rules and have a good command of international negotiation. Team of talents in global governance should be strengthened to break through the bottleneck and make talents preparation, offering talents support for China's participation in global governance.To establish the norms of legal translation, interdisciplinary legal translation talents cultivation is precisely the bottleneck that we should breakthrough. Talents cultivation is a systematic project, involving a series of prominent problems including teaching aims, faculty of legal translation, curriculum arrangement, teaching schedule, translation practice and cultivation system, etc. The top priority should be given to the training and cultivation of interdisciplinary faculty of legal translation. Dual strategies can be adopted including 'bringing in' and 'going out'. The former refers to recruiting qualified teachers from home and abroad while the later cultivating and training within the universities by the integration of faculty from both school of foreign languages and cultures and school of laws, promoting the transition from the language-oriented teachers to the law subject-oriented ones. With qualified faculty, a series of problems including the proper teaching aims, optimized curriculum system, improved teaching methods and adequate translation practice can also be gradually resolved in a comprehensive manner.In addition, interdisciplinary talents can also be cultivated through a think tank. Since the convening of the 18th CPC National Congress, there has been a rapid development of a new type of think tank construction. In 2014, the Ministry of Education of People's Republic of China released the Notice of Promoting Plan of Construction of New Type of Universities' Think Tanks with Chinese Characteristics, noting that universities' think tanks should function as means of strategic research, policy suggestion, talents cultivation, public opinion guidance and public diplomacy and interdisciplinary think tank talents should be cultivated as the talent support and guarantee.Since the socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered into the new era, laws and regulations translation is of critical significance, not only contributing Chinese wisdom to the global governance but also enhancing China's cultural soft power. Talents cultivation also appeals to new modes and methods. Think tank research is characterized by the integration and combination of multi disciplines and researchers. Through assembling the elites from different subjects and fields, think tank is conducting research-oriented to the requirement of national strategy. One of the noticeable characters of the top-level think tank in universities abroad is to merge into the talent cultivation system of their subordinate colleges or schools. For instance, advanced researchers in Hoover Institution of Stanford University mostly undertake the responsibility of cultivating students and curriculum teaching. The institute also offers practice posts for students in the project research.Certainly, this is a good experience for us to draw from. Universities in China can establish think tank oriented in China's Moderation of Rule of Law and Its External Publicity from the whole universities level by the combination of faculty from the school of foreign languages and cultures, school of laws and school of communication, etc., even by bringing in the elite experts from governments and renowned universities from the world. Through project research, regional cooperation, international communication and academic exchange, teams of faculty can widen its serving fields and develop the external talents cultivation system, including the writing of textbooks, curriculum schedule and practice base development, etc. By combining researchers from different disciplines, think tank is the new and innovative pathway to cultivate interdisciplinary talents. C. Highlighting Continuous Standardization WorkThe work of standardization is of vital significance to secure the quality of translation, which is not only an activity of knowledge innovation but also the publicity of it, worthy of being extremely highlighted. In reviewing and approving the terms, as practice tells us, individual capability is the basis, collective wisdom is the key point, and way of operation is the guarantee. As a systematic work, we should consider it in a comprehensive and scientific way with a set of complete mechanism.Since the separation of practice and research still exists, we cannot expect that the standardization work will be done just by the self-consciousness of the translators. In effect, it is also hard to accomplish without concerted efforts. Standardization work itself is so complicated that there must be concerning departments, especially the department of translation practice, for instance, the Legislative Affairs Office, actively leading the tasks with the adequate financial support, sound mechanism construction and qualified teams of personnel, etc.Standardization should be equipped with a team of professional talents who specialize in doing this job. In addition to a team of translators, it is also a must for organizing a professional team of standardization, including experienced experts of jurisprudence, linguistics, Chinese language and foreign languages, in light of the significance of laws and regulations translation. Independent from translation itself, by regularly standardizing the laws and regulations translation, the team and its achievements gradually become the authoritative guidance for whole country's laws and regulations translation.Standardization should follow the principle of being systematic. On the one hand, terms in laws and regulations of the country level as well as regulations and rules of the local level should be consistent, which needs the organization to follow the communication norm from top to bottom, that is, strengthening the coordination from upper-level legislation to lower-level legislation and the cooperation and communication from regions to regions. On the other hand, it implies that both the terms translation in legislative texts and other related legal texts, such as terms in administrative enforcement of law of police, frontier guard, and customs, should be standardized in a complete way, or rather, terms used in different departments involving translation should also be standardized at the same time. The standardization in the translation of laws and regulations is solely one part of the whole legal translation.Standardization should be technicalization with the established technical norms. As the development of language service industry, there is a growing emergence of computer-aided translation. New software is gradually applied in translation, which can substantially improve translators' productivity and optimize the translation process. By the application of Computer-Aided Translation, much work can be done conveniently, such as, establishing Chinese-English parallel corpus which will facilitate the consulting and retrieving of words and expressions and realizing better management of the language assets. Most computer-aided translation tools, such as SDL Trados, Deja vu X, MemoQ, OmegaT, etc., are equipped with the basic function of management. The common commercial management system includes Across Language Server, Beetext Flow, GlobalLink GMS, Kilgray MemoQ, Language Networks Espresso, MultiTrans Prism, Plunet Business Manager, Project-open, SDL Trados Synergy, SDL WorldServer, and Translation Office 3000, etc. And some companies even develop their own terminology extraction tools, such as SDL MultiTerm Exract, acrolinx IQ Terminology Manager, Across crossTerm, AnyLexic, BeeText Term, Heartsome Dictionary Editor, and LogiTerm, etc. By language assets, it refers to the language resources produced in translation. After many years of laws and regulations translation, a lot of results or products have been accomplished which are also called language assets. The language assets are mainly comprised of terminology and translation memory. Actually, both help to establish the language database, which can definitely improve translation working efficiency, knowledge share and faster pace of problems solving in the terminology management system.Standardization should be regular and routine. Laws and regulations translation is an everlasting activity because the new laws and regulations always emerge with the pace of the times and local regulations and rules translation also bears its distinctive characteristics. As the guarantee and guidance of translation quality, standardization work should also be continuous. However, the connotation of standardization should not be limited to the compilation of dictionary and establishment of database, because repetitive compilation of dictionary and construction of database of low level might in part facilitate translation but fail to secure the standardization and unification of translation. It is still necessary for the re-standardization of even the already standardized English translation of terms, which is a process of striving for perfection.At last, standardization work should strengthen its publicity. There still exist such problems as the scarce use of previously mentioned handbook compiled for terms and sentences translation. A variety of reasons contribute to this, such as the inconvenient use of the handbook to look up words and expressions, but the most important is the lack of publicity. Standardization results itself should become the quality norm that the translators will strictly observe. Therefore, special publishing and distribution channel should be established for the latest standardization achievements to make sure that translators engaging in legal translation will get to know it and consciously apply it. D. Advancing Theoretical Research and Its ApplicationAs President Xi Jinping pointed out in his report at the 19th CPC National Congress, we will work faster to develop philosophy and social sciences with Chinese characteristics. Nowadays, strong philosophy and social sciences, with academic research as the core, are the basis for us to establish external discourse system, which can help us to gain international power of discourse. Discourse systems of western countries are powerful precisely because they have solid theoretical research and innovative concepts which make western theories win international popularity.As one indispensable part of philosophy and social sciences, both legal translation practice and its theoretical research bear the distinctive significance, not only helping us to enhance our cultural soft power, but also helping us to gain the international power of discourse. It is known to us all that translation thoughts can drive action and translation theory can propel practice. At its core, the theory is also beneficial to discerning the truth from false, distinguishing the right from wrong and improving our judgment.Theoretical research is the spring of the innovation of concepts, terms and categories. The theory of legal translation develops by drawing nourishment from other disciplines. However, current academic research mainly involves the system-functional linguistics, and the translator's subjectivity and relevance theory. Dominated by western theories in translation research, it is urgent for us to build our own system of translation theory with Chinese values. Since we have actively devoted to laws and regulations translation, China's translation theory research should be rooted in China's practice. That is not to say that we should give up all the western theories. On the contrary, on the basis of borrowing ideas from them, we will also add some Chinese elements. China has a long history of translation theory, leaving us a large number of achievements in translation research. What should be done is to, following the principle of cultural confidence and by learning from western theories, inherit, summarize, innovate and develop our own translation theory with distinctive Chinese style, establishing the translation theory system and publicizing it to the world.Generally speaking, translation research is divided into three hierarchies, that is, research on methods, strategies and thoughts. Research on methods is normally the direct experience gained from the translation practice. Research on strategies is the reflection on the problems and the discovery and recognition of the natural law of translation. Research on thoughts is of holistic insights into the essence of translation. In other words, people's recognition of translation is sure to evolve from the micro level to macro level. Macro level research, from the holistic perspective, bears the significance of relative guidance and overall planning, while micro research is full of much translation experience and many techniques. For the translators, both are all indispensable part of theoretical research. Usually, the micro level research is so close to the translation practice involving many specific problems that it attracts many scholars to devote to it. That explains why more research at present remains on the micro or meso level, and there is still much room for the research into legal translation from the macro level, to make legal translation theoretical research more systematic.In addition, communication should also be strengthened between the departments of theory research and translation practice. Theoretical work is not done for the sake of itself but also for publicizing new thoughts and new knowledge. The new standardization results of legal translation by researchers should be released to the professional translators through much publicity, training classes and symposiums, etc. A series of measures should be taken to improve the application of latest research achievements, such as, to establish the cooperation organization between translation practice and research departments, build a specialist team of translation practice and research, actively apply the results of translation research to guiding regulations and rules translation practice, and adjust the translation research aims according to the translation practice.The significance of translation changes with the times. In the historical development of translation, it has largely evolved into three stages, namely, the first phase dominated by translating religion and classics, the second phase dominated by translating literary masterpieces and classics of social sciences, and the third phase of translating practical materials and texts, also called the professionalized phase, specifically speaking, the translation of commercial documents and papers of national governments and international organizations. Correspondingly, the significance of translation has altered from original pure cultural communication into nowadays the wider category and translation is increasingly becoming a crucial approach for serving the national development and participation in global governance. The significance of translation has been uplifted to a certain place in China. At the same time, the vital significance also requires us to consider and study translation from the perspective of the language-centered to cross disciplines paradigm, rather than being limited to the level of both languages.In this day and age, enhancing China's cultural soft power, a most important premise for Chinese nation's great rejuvenation, is not only a key strategic point in our cultural development but also an indispensable part of our strategic thoughts of developing a harmonious world. The soft power is the force represented in a nation's culture and ideology. Undoubtedly, as a communication bridge and method, translation is increasingly becoming an essential part of cultural soft power in China. Needless to say, the sound and healthy development of translation industry is sure to secure the quality of translation and contribute to developing China's image in the world.Influenced by both internal and external factors, legal translation is definitely a norm-governed activity. Currently, as in its initial stage of development with greater demand for translation work, there is an inevitable violation of norms in legal translation practice. Certainly, translation norms grow increasingly mature as translation industry develops. However, it does not mean that we wait and cannot do anything at all. On the contrary, it is necessary for us to actively consider legal translation comprehensively and systematically under the guidance of norm theory. Following the preliminary norms, preparation and selection of appropriate translators require us to reinforce the cultivation of interdisciplinary legal translation talents. In accordance with the operational norms, we should strengthen the project management of laws and regulations translation, improving the accountability norm, relation norm and communication norm. At the same time, standardization of legal translation should go along with the practice, which is a continuous activity and under the guidance with advanced theoretical research. Considering form the post-translation phase, management of language assents and theoretical research with Chinese style are also sure to further guarantee the sound development of relation norm.All in all, China is now actively engaging in legal translation because it is now shouldering more responsibilities than ever before in the world. The world order is also gradually coordinated by international rules and norms. Laws and regulations are one of the latest achievements gained in China's modernization of the rule of law. Only through translation can they really contribute Chinese wisdom to global governance. Active participation in developing norms of translation can also stir its development to a positive direction. This is not only conducive to the whole legal translation industry but also to enhancing China's cultural soft power and facilitating its participation in global governance.
