A Contrastive Analysis Of References In English And Chinese International Conventions And Their Translations

Since Halliday and Hasan have systematically put forward the cohesion theory, thistheory has gained wide attention from linguists and translators. Cohesion, as one of themost important linguistic features of texts, is divided into grammatical cohesion and lexicalcohesion. Among these cohesion forms, reference which belongs to grammatical cohesionis an indispensible part of cohesion theory and plays an influential role in theunderstanding and translation of texts. However, the previous studies are mainly limited tothe contrastive analysis of references in general texts. There exist potentials in thecontrastive study of reference in legal languages.International Conventions, which are one of the sources of international law as well asdomestic laws, are one special kind of legal language. Many international conventionswhich Chinese government has joined have English and Chinese versions and bothversions enjoy equal legal validity. Under this circumstance, the contrastive study ofreferences in English and Chinese international conventions can be persuasive.In this thesis, the author selects two international conventions related to human rightsas linguistic data to conduct a quantitative analysis. Based on Halliday and Hasan’s theory,the author classifies references into three categories: personal references, demonstrativereferences and comparative references and contrasts the use of references in the Englishand Chinese international conventions. Through the contrastive study, the author has foundthat English prefers to use personal references and tends to use the third person whileChinese mainly relies on the repetition of nouns or zero anaphor. As for the use frequencyof demonstrative references, the use of “that” is less frequent than “this” in English,nevertheless the situation is opposite in Chinese in which “这”(zhe) is more frequentthan“那”(na). In terms of the use of comparative references, there are a few differencesbetween English and Chinese. In the following part, the author explores reasons causingthese differences from language itself and presents relevant translation strategies in attemptto achieve equivalence during the process of English-Chinese translation. The analysis and contrast on references may promote the general grasp and accurateunderstandings of texts. Through this research, the author hopes it can urge people tocomprehend and use international conventions correctly, provide a new thinking patternand improve the quality of legal translation. In addition, this will make a contribution tothe translators, linguists and jurists to the further study of international conventions as wellas legal communication between English speaking countries and China, and offer somereferences for the understanding of cross-cultural legal issues.