Lexical, Syntactic and Textual Features of Shipping Legal Documents in Chinese and English

Abstract
Against the background of economic globalization and international trade, shipping and legal industry play an important role in China and English language world. The language barrier is no longer the insurmountable Tower of Babel, thus accurate and consistent translation of shipping legal documents helps facilitate people’s understanding of maritime laws in Chinese and English. This paper builds up a corpus of Chinese and English shipping legal documents and analyzes the language characteristics with corpus software WordSmith 8.0 and AntConc 4.0.3 to dills down the linguistic and textual features in the translation of shipping legal documents in Chinese and English. By investigating the authentic examples from the complied Chinese and English laws and rules, it is found that lexical features are dominant in the use of synonymous words, archaic words, and general words with special meanings; distinct syntactic features are shown in long and complex sentences, passive voice, and nominalization; and the order of translation at textual level is of great significance for bilingual readers to effectively understand shipping legal documents. Besides, corresponding strategies are thus raised to provide translation suggestions for Chinese-English translators, shipping companies, and shipping lawmakers.

Keywords
Shipping Legal Documents; Linguistic Features; Translation Strategy; Chinese-English Translation

Cite this paper
Huixian Li, Lexical, Syntactic and Textual Features of Shipping Legal Documents in Chinese and English, SCIREA Journal of Sociology. Vol. 6 , No. 2 , 2022 , pp. 83 - 103 . https://doi.org/10.54647/sociology84774

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