A Corpus - Based Study On The Translation Of Chinese Verbs

The main function of the contract law is to regulate trade relationship and maintain market order.In the Contract Law of the People’s Republic of China,the Chinese modal words are widely used to express rights and obligations which are closely related with the parties,such as(应当),(必须),(可以),(不得),(不能),(可能).These modal verbs play an important role in the contract law.In the process of C hinese-English translation,the translators need to use these modal words correctly in keeping with the will of each party in the contract.This paper will focus on the modal verbs translation.The author selects three different translation versions of the Contract Law of the People’s Republic of China,which are published by C hina Legal System Publishing House,Foreign Language Press and China Fangzheng Press.Then the author builds Chinese-English bilingual parallel corpus about the contract law and extracts these modal verbs from the corpus.On the basis of corpus,the author compares and analyzes the translation and usage of the modal verbs in three different versions so as to verify them.At last,the author further discusses the proper translations and their modality in the contract law in order to perfect the English version of the contract law.