表原因词组在法律英语中的用法——基于“中国法律法规汉英平行语料库”的统计与分析

Causal Phrases in Legal Documents:Statistics and Analysis on Parallel Corpus of Chinese Legal Documents

在法律语言环境中,对违法违规现象进行解释和说明无可避免,由此必然用到表原因词组。借助“中国法律法规汉英平行语料库”,将表原因英语词组在大陆、台湾和香港子库中的用法基于频率进行分析,并与其在“美国当代英语语料库”中的情况进行对比,探究这类词组的语义韵特征及具体用法,可以揭示和总结其在法律文本环境中的使用规律。研究发现,大陆和台湾子库中一些表原因词组存在使用不当甚至滥用的情况,且个别词组的消极语义韵存在使用过度或误用的现象。对外法律文本的翻译和撰写者应注意相关问题,为法律翻译提供准确和统一译法。

In the language of law,it’s inevitable to make explanations on irregular actions and illegal phenomena.Thus,there must be some words and phrases in reference to reasons.This study makes a detailed comparison and analysis on the frequency of use and semantic prosody of these English words/phrases in legal English through Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA)and Parallel Corpus of Chinese Legal Documents(PCCLD),including its mainland,Hong Kong and Taiwan sub-corpora,thereby revealing and summarizing multiple usages and rules of these phrases in legal English.The results show that there are misuses of these phrases as well as their negative semantic prosody.Suggestions are given for translation and writing of foreign legal documents in order to achieve accuracy in translation of foreign legal texts.