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The modal verbs play a very important role in legal English, which are mainly used to express both the rights and obligations and their scope and degree of the parties in legal English. This paper adopts the documentary method mainly and refers to the comparison and contrast to explore the exact meaning of modal verbs in legal English in order to form a systematic theory in translating it. The documentary method provides a lot of documents to collect kinds of information that is helpful to study and numerously truthful evidence that is helpful to analyze. Also, the function of comparative method is to indicate the correlation and the difference of these modal verbs in translating the legal English. Through the horizontal comparison and the longitudinal analysis, it offers a bright guideline to argue and explore the translation of modal verbs in legal English further.
In order to understand the exact meaning of modal verbs in legal English, this paper will describe and analyze the modal verbs “shall”, “may”, “must” which are used to be applied to express the imperative mood, presenting its normalization and binding force as well as their translation in high frequency with many examples and the usage and translation of legal English. Drawing amply from authoritative bilingual sources for illustration, the author identifies and analyzes existing conventions for handling modal verbs in legal translation and suggests that additional guidelines or rules be adopted to this end, hoping it helpful to legal translation.
II. Relative Exposition
2.1 Modal Verbs
Modal verb, also called modal auxiliaries, represents the speaker’s views about the actions or state, or shows subjective assumptions (Quirk 223). There are 13 modal verbs―can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would, must, need, dare, ought to and used to in English. Generally, each modal verb has kinds of meanings in different contexts.
In order to understand their meaning well, F. R. Palmer clarifies them into two kinds: subject-oriented and discourse-oriented. In common English, modal verbs are used to indicate “possibility”, “willingness”, “capability”, “assumption”, “tendency”, “permission” and “subjective habits” (Zhang Zhenbang 5―7). The function of these modal verbs is presenting the personal emotions and the meanings of speaking or strengthening or lightening the tone of language. Therefore, they not only have the practical connotation but have the modal connotation.
In legal English, the amount of modal verbs is limited. Only “shall”, “may”, “must”, “can”, “will”, and “should” are used in legal English, among these six modal verbs, “shall”, “may”, and “must” are used frequently. modal verbs are used to be applied to express the imperative mood, presenting its normalization and binding force in legal texts.
The application of modal verbs in legal English presents the formality of law and they make law language much more accuracy and precision. Therefore, to translate the modal verbs properly is becoming a tough task for law experts and scholars. Here, the author will discuss and explore the use and translation of main modal verbs in legal English in the following chapters.
2.2 The Features of Legal English
The legal English is a very formal language and it has its own unique style and features. This chapter will discuss the features of legal English from two aspects: the legal words and legal sentences.