Communications in Humanities Research ISSN: 2753-7072
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Research Article

A Comparative Corpus-linguistic Study of Thick Adjectives: Cases of the PRC Criminal Law and the Model Penal Code

Jinwen YangZhejiang University*

* Corresponding author: [email protected]

Abstract

With the promotion of law-based governance in China, laws and regulations play an ever more important role in our country whilst placing further demands on PRC law translation. Guided by previous research, this paper conducts a comparative study into the adjective phenomenon from the two selected corpus--the Model Penal Code and the PRC Criminal Law, respectively representing professional legal discourse and Chinese law translation. Concerning the research result, the author concludes the legal norms drawn from Model Penal Code and puts forward improvement proposals for the official Chinese-English law translations in terms of adjective distribution and category choices. The findings demonstrate that legal language tends to avoid adjectives and that thick concepts are more commonly used due to their evaluative intensity. By contributing to the promotion of future C-E legal translation, this paper aims to support China's legal system in its increasingly important role on the global stage.

Keywords: professional legal discourse; law translation; thick adjective
Published: September 14, 2023
DOI: 10.54254/2753-7064/6/20230265
Volume: CHR Vol.6
pp. 255-262
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