A Corpus-based Social Cognitive Approach to the Study of Terminology "Equivalents" in International Economic Law Between Chinese and English

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate how legal terms have been translated within International Economic Law (IEL) between English and Chinese. IEL regulates the economic relations and economic procedures and strategies of states, international organizations and firms across national borders. However, the translation of the legal lexicon has been identified as a major problem in International Economic Law, especially between English and Chinese. The paper draws on research in which legal translation is not purely a technical exercise that simply involves linguistic translation from one language to another but rather a social act and a process of cognitive representation from one sign system to another. The English-Chinese Parallel Corpus of International Economic Law (PCIEL) was built to carry out research to analyse the subject matter and discuss the feasibility of translating legal terminology by using a corpus-based systematic micro-level framework. The paper addresses problems of legal terminology translation equivalents from a social-cognitive approach – both at the linguistic and non-linguistic level – within the following three categories: Law-related terminology, Economy-related terminology and Political Entity-related terminology.