Forensic Language In Chinese And American Constitutions-from The Perspective Of Theme-rheme Theory

With the development of globalization as well as international economic andcommunication, translation, especially forensic language translation, has beenattracting more and more attention and become one of the most popular researchissues. As a particular stylistic language, legal English holds accuracy as the primaryprinciple, demanding solemnity as well as authority not only in the accurate wordingand grammar, but also in the deliberation of the whole text. Indeed, there has beenmuch research on legal English translation. However, most of them are focused on thelexical, syntactical accuracy and so on. As for the textual organization and cohesion,not so much attention has been paid.As a self-integrated text, the constitution of a nation has always been thefundamental and organic law for all the other legal provisions in the whole nationallegal system and jurisdiction. The language of constitution has always shown, directlyand prominently, the characteristics of legal language in such aspects as core wording,syntactic structure, genre, textual organization and so on. Therefore, applyingTheme-rheme theory, this thesis takes both Chinese and American nationalconstitutions as study material, pays much attention to the thematic structure typesand thematic progression patterns in legal texts, and analyzes the differentcharacteristics in the two languages, thus providing certain guidance and instructionsfor the relevant legal translation practice.Through careful analysis, the following features are found out:In terms of thematic structure, of the four types of thematic structure: simpletheme, multiple theme, clausal theme, and predicted theme, the frequency of theoccurrence of simple theme is the highest. In comparison with English legal text,there are much more use of simple theme and less use of multiple and clausal theme;In terms of thematic structure, of all the ten patterns of thematic progression, thefour typical patterns (continuous pattern, parallel pattern, concentration pattern, intersection pattern) are taking up a considerably large proportion in both English andChinese legal texts. However, the distribution of the different patterns is morediversified and varied in the English law text than it is in the Chinese counterpart, andthe other six patterns are playing a comparatively more active part in the textorganization.The whole paper is divided into five chapters: Chapter one is the introduction tothe research background, significance, purpose, methodology and framework; makesa brief introduction to the current research on forensic language, Chapter two displaysthe development of relevant theme-rheme theory, and pays attention to the currentapplication of theme-rheme theory in legal translation; Chapter three gives a detailedintroduction to the theme-rheme theory, including different types of thematic structureas well as patterns of thematic progression; Chapter four, through a contrastiveanalysis and comparison of the language in the two constitutions, concludes certaincharacteristics of forensic language; In Chapter five, certain conclusions are reached,which are expected to provide some guidance for legal translation.