A corpus-based approach to the translation of conceptual metaphors in legal language: Chinese Yuān (冤) and English ‘Injustice’, ‘Wrong’ and ‘Tort’

ABSTRACT

Yuān (冤) is a Chinese word literally meaning ‘bent’ which translates into English as ‘injustice’, ‘wrong’ and ‘tort’. It realises various conceptual metaphors in Chinese, such as yuan is bent, yuan is dirty, and yuan is dark. How does the English translation change these conceptual metaphors and their reception by target text readers? This study takes a Descriptive Translation Studies approach to answer this question. First, it introduces the methods of retrieving and analysing linguistic data, such as corpus search, and the principle of Cognitive Equivalence. Second, it shows the metaphors that yuān realises in Chinese and those realised by its translations in English, and compares their legal meanings. This study has found that ‘injustice’, ‘wrong’ and ‘tort’ are bent, as yuān is, although ‘tort’ is fully lexicalised and does not activate this mapping in contemporary English. None of the translations for yuān maps dirtiness and darkness onto the corresponding abstract notions. The legal meanings of these words in the two languages are also significantly different.

KEYWORDS:

• Yuān (冤, injustice)
• Conceptual Metaphor Theory
• corpus linguistics
• Chinese-English legal translation

Acknowledgements

A draft of this paper was presented at the conference Translation History and Translation Stories (April 2019, Treviso) and the 13th conference for the Association for Researching and Applying Metaphor (June 2020, Hamar). The audiences are acknowledged for their feedback and suggestions. I would like to also kindly acknowledge Prof. Deborah Cao (Griffith University, Australia) for the inspiring input she continues to give me through her work. The two anonymous reviewers are also kindly acknowledged for their insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Michele Mannoni is a Chinese legal translation and legal language scholar at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature of the University of Verona, Italy. He has published a number of articles in the area, including research conducted in cooperation with Prof. Deborah Cao (Griffith University, Australia). He is currently a member of the research team of the project ‘Digital Humanities Applied to Foreign Languages and Literature’ (2018-2022) funded by the former Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) under the ‘Departments of Excellence’ plan at his Department at the University of Verona.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 All the acronyms are explained at their first occurrence, except for those conventionally used in translation studies, namely the following: TS: Translation Studies; DTS: Descriptive Translation Studies; SL: Source Language; ST: Source Text; SC: Source Culture; TL: Target Language; TT: Target Text; TC: Target Culture.

2 Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations are of my own.

3 Shuō Wén Jiě Zì. ‘Yuān 冤’. Shuō Wén Jiě Zì (說文解字) [Explaining graphs and analyzing characters]. http://www.zdic.net/z/15/sw/51A4.htm.

4 Conventionally, conceptual metaphors and conceptual domains are indicated in small capitals, and a metaphor formula comes in the form d2 is d1.

5 The principle of semantic tension between the domain of use of a lexical unit in one context and its primary meaning is also at the core of MIP and MIPVU procedures (Pragglejaz Group, 2007; Steen et al. 2010).

6 The Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) developed by the Pragglejaz Group (2007), and its extension MIPVU (Steen et al. 2010), take English as their basis. I have doubts about whether these procedures can be straightforwardly applied to a large corpus of Chinese texts. At the time of writing this essay, the study by Wang et al. (2019) testing the transferability of the two protocols to Chinese had not yet been published, so I could not consult it.

7 As is the case with many verbs relating to physical activity, it is particularly difficult to ascertain whether verbs of utterance such as hǎn (scream), jiào (call out), or míng (鸣, logDice of 7.06) have a metaphorical meaning when co-occurring with yuān or its related components such as qū.

8 By clicking on the citation in SketchEngine, the user can access the source from which the citation was retrieved. In the case of (4), the link was in fact a broken link and could not open. The information about the context was retrieved by googling the same sentence in inverted commas in the Google search bar, so as to prompt Google to retrieve any instances of that precise phrasing. The citation appears in Li Qing (2008).

9 Online Etymology Dictionary. Harper, Douglas (ed.) ‘Wrong’. https://www.etymonline.com/word/wrong#etymonline_v_10887.

10 Online Etymology Dictionary. Harper, Douglas (ed.) ‘Tort’. https://www.etymonline.com/word/tort#etymonline_v_15398.

11 Online Etymology Dictionary. Harper, Douglas (ed.) ‘Redress’. https://www.etymonline.com/word/redress.

12 Online Etymology Dictionary. Harper, Douglas (ed.) ‘Correct’. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=correct.

13 The Law Dictionary. ‘Injustice'. https://thelawdictionary.org/injustice/.

14 The Law Dictionary. ‘Wrong’. The Law Dictionary. https://thelawdictionary.org/wrong/

15 The People’s Law Dictionary. Hill, Gerald, and Kathleen Hill. ‘Wrongful’ https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=2268.

16 The Law Dictionary. ‘Tort’. The Law Dictionary. https://thelawdictionary.org/tort/

Additional information

Funding

The Author wishes to acknowledge the funding that the former Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research granted to the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at the University of Verona under the ‘Departments of Excellence’ plan for the project ‘Digital Humanities Applied to Foreign Languages and Literature’ (2018–2022).