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Part of
Handbook of Terminology: Volume 3. Legal Terminology
Edited by Łucja Biel and Hendrik J. Kockaert
[Handbook of Terminology 3] 2023
► pp. 191–205

Bilingual legal terminology in Hong Kong

Past, present and future

| The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
| The University of Hong Kong

The aims of this chapter are to describe the development of bilingual legal terminology in Hong Kong, to identify current issues and to explore future directions, including finding appropriate strategies to translate English legal terms into Chinese, based on key recent examples. Having been under the British rule for more than 150 years, Hong Kong is for the first time in history translating the entire common law system into Chinese. This process of “legal bilingualism” started at the legislative level and then extended to the judicial level, with the first bilingual law enacted in 1989 and the first English judgment translated into Chinese in 1995. However, there has been criticism of some newly coined Chinese legal terms. It is hoped that while the translation of case law continues, more suitable methods will be adopted to translate English legal terms into Chinese, that meet both the local needs of this post-colonial city and the needs of the Chinese world at large.

Keywords: Hong Kong, bilingual legal terminology, common law system, Chinese, translation theory and practice
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Past history: Creation of bilingual legal terminology
    • 2.1Conceptual issues of Hong Kong Chinese legal terminology
    • 2.2Conceptual issues of Chinese legal terminology in Chinese regions
  • 3.Present state: Implementation of bilingual legal terminology
    • 3.1Methodology and related issues
    • 3.2Resources and related issues
  • 4.Future outlook: Bilingual legal terminology in the making
    • 4.1Full use of terminological data
    • 4.2More use of descriptive method
    • 4.3Conformity with Chinese grammar
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 1 December 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hot.3.bil1
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