Pragmatic Functions of Vague Expressions in Legal Texts and Its Translation Techniques

  • Guangcai Du School of international languages, Xiamen University of Technology
Ariticle ID: 1415
140 Views, 45 PDF Downloads
Keywords: legal text, pragmatic function, translation skills

Abstract

As the international communications are more frequent in the current situation, it is necessary for China to both better understand the law in other countries and let the world have a clearer idea of the law in China so as to avoid some unnecessary disputes.As vague expression is a common language phenomenon in legal texts, this article focuses on its pragmatic functions to explain the necessity of vague expression in legal texts and intends to explore translation technique to deal with the vague expression in legal texts.It is found that vague expression has the following functions: 1) generalization and maintaining conciseness of the texts 2) maintaining stability of law 3) maintaining the ultimate accuracy of law enforcement and justice. And there are three translation techniques to deal with the vague expression: 1) literal translation 2) addition and omission 3) conversion between precision and vagueness.

References

[1] Chen B. Research on the translation of legal ambiguity from the perspective of functional equivalence theory (in Chinese). China After-school Education 2018; (18): 61-62.

[2] Chen J. On vague words and their translation in Legal English (in Chinese). Journal of Mudanjiang Institute of Education 2012; (2): 32-33.

[3] Dong M, Zhao Y, Chen J. Vague words and their translation in legal English (in Chinese). Overseas Travel and Employment 2011; (10): 56-57.

[4] Qu X, Zeng X. Pragmatic function analysis of Chinese fuzzy language (in Chinese). Chinese Character Culture 2020; (12): 5-6+14.

[5] Wang Q. The fuzziness of legal English (in Chinese). Journal of Ningbo University (Humanities edition) 2005; (06): 87-90.

[6] Xiao Y. The application and translation of Vague words in Legal English (in Chinese). Chinese Science and Technology Translation 2001; (1): 5-8.

[7] Xu W. A study on interpretation methods of vague language in Sino-Japanese diplomacy (in Chinese). Dalian University of Technology 20109.

[8] Xu Z. An analysis of vague words in legal English and their translation (in Chinese). Journal of Jixi University 2009; 9 (5): 69-71.

[9] Y H. On the application and translation of fuzzy words in legal English (in Chinese). Journal of Xiangtan Normal University (Social Science Edition) 2007; (3): 122-124.

[10] Yuan H. The function and translation of fuzzy words in legal English (in Chinese). Journal of Hunan University of Science and Technology 2009; 30(5): 185-187.

Published
2020-11-10