A Contrastive Analysis Of Personal Reference In English-chinese Legal Texts And Its Mutual Translation

Cohesion in English by M.A.K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan has laid the foundationfor cohesion theory, which has gained popularity in the field of linguistics and translation.There are two main types of cohesion: grammatical and lexical. Personal reference, as onetype of the latter, plays also an indispensable role in text-forming. It is also true of personalreference in legal texts. The alternatives of personal reference in English and Chinese legaltexts determine not only the quality of the translation, but also the legal force of thetranslation.This thesis chooses two typical normative legal texts, Uniform Commercial Code(U.C.C) and Contract Law of the People’s Republic of China, as the database for casestudy. The focus is on the discussion of the characteristics, the similarities and differencesof personal references between English and Chinese legal texts. Specifically, English andChinese legal texts have the fact in common that the third person pronouns and possessivedeterminers are overwhelmingly used. However, personal references, as a whole, are useddistinguishingly between the two legal texts. Legal English attaches a great importance tothe use of personal reference, which, on the contrary, decreases in Chinese normalizedlegal texts. We believe that hypotaxis and parataxis can provide a convincing explanationto the deep reasons behind the differences. Hypotactic English emphasizes thecompleteness of form; therefore, personal references are overwhelmingly used. Whileparatactic Chinese, with the focus on the coherence of meaning, emphasizes the use oflexical repetition to achieve cohesion rather than personal reference.In light of the fact that contrastive analysis of personal reference plays anirreplaceable role in mutual translation of English and Chinese legal texts, this thesismakes an attempt to summarize basic strategies for translating personal reference,specifically, compensation, omission and so on. This thesis serves as a catalyst, and canprovide some insight into the promotion of legal translation quality.