Abstract:

This project aims to develop an e-learning platform of legal phrases and expressions for translation, English and law students. The platform, based on a corpus of bilingual legislation, will contain training exercises to hone students’ knowledge and skills of English legal words and phrases, and their existing Chinese counterparts. Tied in with undergraduate and postgraduate legal translation courses, the cross-disciplinary study strives to stimulate participants’ interest and motivation to explore key stylistic features of bilingual law through blended learning. Knowing how to use the special words and phrases that are a prominent feature of legal language is essential to translating legal texts. With the recent replacement of archaic legal language by plain legal language in all English-speaking countries, the platform will provide an opportunity for students to familiarise themselves with both Western language styles and their Chinese translation. The corpus is drawn from major Hong Kong bilingual legislation, and will be used to design training materials for the different levels of student learning. In the long term, the work of creating a corpus of annotated bilingual legislation will provide authentic teaching materials for the development of relevant courses such as legal translation, legal English, stylistics and corpus linguistics.