Synonym Coordination in English Legislative Texts and Its Translation

Shuqiong WU, Chunguo GONG

Abstract


Synonym coordination is a common and intriguing linguistic phenomenon in legal texts, especially in  legislative texts. Synonyms have been explored from different perspectives in the prior studies, but few studies have been done on synonym coordination. This paper discusses the pervasiveness, characteristics and classification of synonym coordination in English legislative texts. It has been found that the pervasiveness of synonym coordination is attributed to the historical, rhetoric and legal factors. Synonym coordination can be divided into three types: absolute synonym coordination, relative synonym coordination and relevant synonym coordination. Based on Nida’s theory of functional equivalence, the paper puts forward the corresponding translation methods for each type. This study will shed light on the further studies on synonym co-occurrence.


Keywords


Synonym coordination; Legislative Texts; Translation

Full Text:

PDF

References


Cruse, D. A. (2002). Meaning in language: An introduction to semantics and pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Davies, M. (2013). Opposition and ideology in news discourse. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Divjak, D. (2006). Structuring the lexicon: A clustered model for near-synonymy. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Divjak, D., & Gries, S. T. (2008). Clusters in the mind? Converging evidence from near-synonymy in Russian. The Mental Lexicon, 3(2), 188-213.

Du, J. B. (2004). Forensic linguistics. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press.

Guo, J. Z. (2000). Contemporary translation studies in USA. Wuhan, China: Hubei Education Press.

Gries, S. T., & Otani, N. (2010). Behavioral profiles: A corpus-based perspective on synonymy and antonymy. ICAME Journal, 34, 121-150.

Hu, H. P. (2005). A sketch of synonyms. Shanghai: Shanghai Classics Press.

Jeffries, L. (2010). Opposition in discourse: The construction of oppositional Meaning. London/New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.

Jones, S., Murphy, M. L., Paradis, C., & Willners, C. (2012). Antonyms in English: Construals, constructions and canonicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lohmann, A. (2014). English coordinate constructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ma, W. (2014). The original analysis of doublets, triplets or synonym strings in legal English. Journal of Kaifeng Institute of Education, 34(9), 31-32.

Nida, E. A. (1964). Toward a science of translating. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Nida, E. A., & Taber, C. R. (1969). The theory and practice of translation. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Nida, E. A. (1993). Language, culture and translating. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press.

Newmark, P. (1993). Paragraphs on translation. Clevedon and Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.

Summers, D. (2005). Longman dictionary of English language and culture. Beijing: The Commercial Press.

Tiersma, P. M. (1999). Legal language. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Webster, M. (2002). Webster’s third new international dictionary. USA: Merriam Webster Inc.

Xie, T. Z. (2008). An introduction to foreign contemporary translation theories. Tianjin: Naikai University Press.

Zhou, F. Z. (2002). Principles of translation from English into Chinese. Hefei, China: Anhui University Press.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/9432

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2017 shuqiong wu, Chunguo Gong

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Share us to:   

 

Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/sll/submission/wizard


Reminder

How to do online submission to another Journal?

If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:

1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author

Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.

2. Submission

Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.


We only use three mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: caooc@hotmail.com; sll@cscanada.net; sll@cscanada.org

 Articles published in Studies in Literature and Language are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).

 STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Editorial Office

Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138 
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org 
E-mail: office@cscanada.net; office@cscanada.org; caooc@hotmail.com

Copyright © 2010 Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture