A Corpus-Based Study on the Translation of Performative Verbs in Legal Texts: Take Bilingual Legal Texts in Mainland China and Hong Kong for Example

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.220504.259How to use a DOI?

Keywords

legal translation; performative verbs; mainland China; Hong Kong; law

Abstract

China’s legal system is constantly improving. Due to historical reasons, the legal systems and texts in mainland China and Hong Kong are slightly different. One of the important functions of law is to integrate norms and admonish the society, which is mainly realized through speech act verbs. Therefore, as one of the most commonly used and important concepts in English, as well as an important part of speech act verbs, the performative verbs has the function of action including instruction, warning and advice. The study of its translation is helpful to understand the similarities and differences between the law integration norms in mainland China and Hong Kong. Correct and appropriate translation also plays a key role in whether the law can function normally in the society. Therefore, this paper collects bilingual legal texts in mainland China and Hong Kong, establishes a parallel corpus, sorts out the performative verbs applied in legal provisions on the basis of the classification of speech acts by Austin, Searle and other scholars, and studies their translation based on the equivalence theory. Through analysis and research, this paper holds that the translation of legal provisions plays an important role in social stability, legal accuracy and standardization, and legal translation is also one of the important research fields of translation and legal studies. In addition, legal translation needs to combine theory with practice, constantly improve the English translation of law, so as to improve the accuracy and standardization of English translation.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jiaqi Liu
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/06/01
TI  - A Corpus-Based Study on the Translation of Performative Verbs in Legal Texts: Take Bilingual Legal Texts in Mainland China and Hong Kong for Example
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 8th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1428
EP  - 1431
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220504.259
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.220504.259
ID  - Liu2022
ER  -