Abstract
Legal translation has been a highly challenging yet important field of specialist translation. While Hallidayan functionalist approaches to language and translation studies have offered insights into legal discourses and their translations, the complexities of legal language are yet to be described and understood fully due to gaps in human conceptualization and form-function mappings. To address the linguistic obstacles encountered by (novice) legal translators, this chapter aims to discuss applications of cognitive linguistics theories in legal translation, with a specific focus on the English-Chinese direction in the case of Hong Kong. The linguistic features of legal English are described at various levels of grammar and language domains in light of theories and concepts in cognitive semantics and grammars (including the prototype theory, conceptual metaphor theory, and construction grammar). This chapter also discusses a sociocultural theory-based pedagogical framework for applying theories in cognitive linguistics to L2 English legal translator training.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Interfaces Between Translation Studies and Applied Linguistics |
| Editors | Khaleel Bader AL BATAINEH |
| Publisher | IGI Global |
| Chapter | 3 |
| Pages | 63-108 |
| Number of pages | 46 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9798337344416 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9798337344393, 9798337344409 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Feb 2026 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2026 by IGI Global Scientific Publishing.
Keywords
- Cognitive Linguistics
- Legal Translation
- Second Language Acquisition
- Second Language Teaching
- Translator Training
- Applied Linguistics
- Translation Studies
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