法庭口譯之契約書翻譯探討

Translating Legal Contracts for Court Interpretation

法庭對於先前所簽訂之契約書產生爭執時有所聞，法庭口譯者該如何面對契約書翻譯的問題？中國嚴復曾提出「信、達、雅」，一般被視為翻譯各類文體的最高指導原則。法律翻譯方面，王道庚 (2013) 認為若做不到「信達兼顧」，便應該捨達保信。另外，法律文件常見古英語單詞及拉丁文及法語，顯示出法律語言的神聖權威與嚴密性，翻譯時要盡可能表現出來。法庭現場受限於聽者背景與時間因素，嚴復的「信、達、雅」究竟如何被實踐？以下作者以幾件案件的契約書為例，同時觀察其他口譯員在法庭現場的視譯文，並搜尋法學資料檢索系裁判書包含契約書爭執的翻譯文。結論提出，法庭現場由於時間限制及法律翻譯講究的效力對等，嚴復之「信、達、雅」的指導原則，在「信」方面的遵守遠比其他兩項來得重要。

In a court case involving a contract dispute, how should the interpreter deal withthe translation of the contract? In greater China, Yan Fu's three principles of'faithfulness, fluency, and elegance' have long been regarded as guiding principles tobe applied to the translation of various literary styles. In regards to the translation oflegal texts, Wang Daogeng (2013) believes that when it’s not possible to give equalimportance to both faithfulness and fluency, then fluency should be sacrificed. On theother hand, legal documents written in English typically contain many terms andexpressions from Latin, French, and archaic English. Such stylistic features lendprecision and a sense of sacred authority to legal documents, and should be reflectedin a translation as far as possible. In the courtroom while taking into account variouspractical considerations, what should be the interpreter’s actual approach in terms ofYan Fu's three principles? In this paper, the researcher uses descriptive analysis andpresents several examples of actual translations from English into Chinese ofcontracts involved in litigation cases. The results indicate that, due to the paucity oftime and the primary importance of achieving equivalence in legal effect, courtinterpreters necessarily need to give much more importance to “faithfulness” eventhough the level of fluency is possibly sacrificed.