In recent years, thedemand for China’s opening up has increased rapidly, especially after China’saccession to WTO and the development of the Belt and Road. Yet, in the process of opening up, it can be seenthat correct and accurate translation of English legal documents play a vitalrole in foreign trade. Translation and trade policy uncertainty does affectfirm export decisions (Feng, L. amp; Li, Z. amp; Swenson, D. 2017). Suchdemand for interpreting foreign-related legal documents brings opportunity tostudy features and translation of English legal discourse from the perspectiveof stylistics.

Stylisticsis a branch of linguistics which studies style in a scientific and systematicway concerning the manners of different varieties of language at differentlevels. Attenborough (2014) thought that as adiscipline, stylistics links literary criticism to linguistics. It does notfunction as an autonomous domain on its own, and it can be applied to anunderstanding of literature and journalism as well as linguistics. Translationis the conversion between two languages, involving the original author and the translator,thus naturally involving the style of the original author and the translator (田起梅，2014). At the same time, stylisticfeatures in different aspects like lexicology, grammar, phonology andgraphology and semantics (张德禄，张国，张淑杰，胡永近，2016) can also provide a clear directionof the analysis of legal discourse. So, it is important to study translationfrom the perspective of stylistics.

Scholars all over the world have explored the features of legal documentsfrom various perspectives. For example, GloriaGonzález Fuster and Serge Gutwirth (2014) put forward a notion that law pursuesethical values, namely ethics appears sometimes as a superior, stable referenceto which laws can refer to as they evolve in their endless pursuit oftechnological advance. Lengthy sentences and passive voice are another feature ValentinaStepanova (2015) mentioned. However, there are very few documents that study thetranslation of legal discourse, let alone from the perspective of stylistics. Still,documents and works worth learning can be discovered. Deviation of legal Englishfrom the perspective of stylistics (郑艳阳，武守信，2018) offered the current situation of such deviation from differentaspects like historical deviation, deviation of pronunciation, lexicaldeviation and graphological deviation. Translation strategies for legal terms (时宇娇，2019) gave ideas about the translationof vocabulary of legal discourse. Some skills shouldbe acquired such as literal translation, free translation. At the same time, contextualizinglegal discourse and having a good command of law and culture in Englishcountries are basic requirements for interpreting legal discourse. Astudy on stylistic equivalence in translating International commercial contractsfrom the functional stylistic perspective (刘乾君，2010) inspired the thought about Halliday’s theory about functionalstylistics. Considering those documents about law, translation or stylistics, it ispossible to study features and translation of English legal discourse from the perspectiveof stylistics.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

Contents

1 Legal discourse

1.1 Definition and variety of legal discourse

1.2 Legal discourse and stylistics

2 Features of legal discourse

2.1 Lexicalfeatures

2.2 Grammaticalfeatures