Legal translation is a complex and special type of linguistic activity. It involves the mediation between different languages and cultures, and above all, different legal systems. It requires special skills, knowledge, and experience on the part of the translator. Nevertheless, law and legal texts are translatable from one language into another despite various difficulties and complexities, and translating law is a challenging interdisciplinary endeavor, the skills of which can be learned and developed. The skill set of the professional legal translator needs constant updating and upgrading to meet both the old and new challenges in the digital age. This chapter outlines the key concepts and issues involved in legal translation.

This short commentary focuses on language and law and legal translation. It stresses the importance of language used in legal texts in the legal context and the complexities when more than one language is involved in interlingual and cross-cultural communication in law. There are age old challenges in legal translation as well as new ones in the digital age with the increasing use of machine translation systems. It is imperative today that human legal translators are familiar with machine translation tools and aware of how computer aided translation technologies process information and their strengths and weaknesses. To be able to effectively use machine translation systems should become a compulsory part of the digital literacy and skill sets of legal translators in the twenty-first century.

This chapter focuses on the meanings and understanding of words when they are translated to and from Chinese in the legal context. It starts off by briefly discussing the major sources of terminological difficulty when translating law between Chinese and English. This is followed by illustrations of the translated legal terms between Chinese and English and understanding and misunderstanding of such terms. It also considers some of the implications of translingual and cross-cultural communication and understanding translated language in law, and highlights some of the difficulties in comprehending translated legal terms between Chinese and English.

Abstract In this essay, Chinese legal linguistic features, specifically, the terminological features, are discussed, in terms of the Chinese legislative language. It first outlines the historical and cultural developments and context in which classical Chinese conception of law was situated in traditional China, and the emergence and development of the modern Chinese legal language as a peculiar translated legal language. It then highlights the key terminological features of the modern Chinese legal language and some of its complexities with selected illustrative examples from Chinese legal terminology.

Eating wild and intensively-farmed animals is a recipe for more pandemics. Deborah Cao (Griffith University, Australia) says factory farming and the consumption of wild animals needs to end, and China – and the rest of the world – should embrace its long culinary tradition of vegetarianism.

Abstract Due to the suspected link between the coronavirus pandemic and the consumption of free-living animals, the Chinese legislature imposed a comprehensive ban on the illegal trade and eating of terrestrial free-living animals in February 2020. This was followed by a revised national list of animals that can be farmed and eaten and a landmark ban of cat and dog eating in the cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai, the first such bans in China. These recent developments in China may have a far-reaching impact on Chinese people’s attitudes and treatment of animals in the years to come. They should give us hope that Chinese culture and its traditional cultural practices toward animals can change in response to contemporary circumstances and ethical standards and sensitivities.

This paper focuses translation of legal language and the development of modern Chinese legal language as a translated legal language. It first describes the historical contexts in which China underwent enormous and unprecedented social and political changes including changes to law in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It then discusses how translation played an important catalyst role in introducing Western law, legal practices, legal concepts and terminology in the emerging modern Chinese legal language as we know it today, and in the process, lent a helping hand in negotiating China’s transition to modernity through translation and creating a new legal language and legal system. It also considers the issues in translingual and cross-cultural communication and understanding translated Chinese legal language.

In discussions about nonhuman animal protection in China in recent years, one consistent theme is many people in China believe that animal welfare and the legal protection of animals are ahead of their time, and that animal welfare is a Western concept and practice, incompatible with Chinese culture. I argue that animal welfare is compatible with Chinese culture as seen through elements in Chinese traditional philosophy, imperial laws, and some idiomatic expressions in the Chinese language that are sympathetic toward animals. It is acknowledged that the realities in Chinese society have been very harsh as far as animals are concerned and much needs to be done in Chinese society to live up to some of the ideals espoused in Chinese culture and tradition. The grassroots animal protection efforts in China for the past ten years or so have been contributing positively and gaining traction in the right direction.

Previous articleNext article No AccessGeneralRoel Sterckx; Martina Siebert; Dagmar Schäfer(Editors). Animals through Chinese History: Earliest Times to 1911. xiii + 277 pp., figs., tables, bibl., index. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. £75 (cloth). ISBN 9781108428156.Deborah CaoDeborah Cao Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 111, Number 1March 2020 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/707338 Views: 83Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref © 2020 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences 2020, Isis 111, no.S1S1 (Jan 2021): 1–317.https://doi.org/10.1086/713361

This commentary discusses two issues highlighted by Wiebers & Feigin in the context of the current and future global health crisis: the wildlife trade and factory farming. Both are instances of globalized animal cruelty – in China as well as worldwide -- that require global solutions for the well-being of both humans and nonhumans.

This essay sets out to search for an equivalent Chinese word to the English word 'justice' in classical Chinese language, through ancient Chinese philosophical texts, imperial codes and idioms. The study found that there does not seem to be a linguistic sign for 'justice' in classical Chinese, and further, yi resembles 'justice' in some ways and has been used sometimes to translate 'justice', but yi is a complex concept in traditional Chinese philosophy with multiple meanings and it is dissimilar to 'justice' in their semantic and pragmatic meanings in Chinese and English legal culture. While 'justice' is a keyword and fundamental to Western law, yi is not a legal word or concept in classical Chinese in traditional China. Given its complexity, yi does not have a one-to-one equivalent in English. It sometimes carries a sense of 'righteousness' and occasionally 'justice', but yi and 'justice' are not equivalent. In view of these, it becomes understandable that the translations of yi in contemporary Chinese usage vary ranging from 'friendship and justice' to 'greater good', among others. The meaning of yi is still uncertain and context sensitive as it was two thousand years ago.

Vegetarianism has a long tradition in Chinese culture. Both Chinese Buddhism and Daoism promote a vegetarian diet based on the teaching of not taking life. Both also have had a long and fine vegetarian cuisine culture as a healthy lifestyle and a culinary art form. Bean curd was invented by the Chinese some 2,000 years ago. However, if you visit China today, it is not easy to find a vegetarian restaurant or come across a vegetarian. Interestingly, in the past few years, vegetarian restaurants started to appear in major Chinese cities in increasing numbers. This paper first provides an overview of the Chinese vegetarian tradition for the cultural context, and then focuses on vegetarianism in contemporary China. It presents the results from a recent survey on Chinese vegetarian culture before discussing the implications of the study, in particular in relation to ethical eating and animal welfare as a new consideration in Chinese vegetarianism, Chinese health issues associated with meat eating, and a general characterization of the vegetarian culture in contemporary China.

Abstract This article raises a legitimate concern for animals used in research in China. China does not have any anticruelty laws, but there are various regulations concerning the use of animals in research. More scientific experiments using animals are shifting from the West to China, where ethical rules and animal welfare laws are not as stringent as those in Western countries. The article focuses on animals in research in China by outlining the regulatory framework governing such animal use. It also raises ethical issues for Western scientists doing animal research in China.