Law is a tool to control the society and maintain the peace and stability of the society. People can only conduct activities on the basis of law, or they will break the law and be punished. With the integration and globalization of world economy, English has become the predominant language of international business. And legal English is an important and fundamental tool to express the legal concepts clearly so that we Chinese can have a good knowledge of foreign countries’ laws and vice versa and in that way we can communicate with foreign countries effectively.

This paper mainly studies the lexical characteristics of legal English and combines with specific cases to sum up the useful methods of legal documents’ translation. Through the study of foreign words, Old and Middle English, modal verbs and pronouns, this paper analyzes the conservatism, authority, precision of legal English. And this paper’s goal is to introduce the lexical characteristics of legal English and discuss the necessary techniques and methods in the process of translation, so that we learners can improve our ability of understanding and translating legal English. In this way, the communication between our country and the outside would be more frequent and close.

2 The Lexical Characteristics of Legal English

Legislators stipulate obligations and rights strictly for parties concerned by using language. In order to ensure the rigor of law, the law draftsmen try their utmost to prevent any phenomenon of misunderstanding or ambiguity. So it constitutes the conservatism, authority and precision of legal English and the unique uses of words form the different style of language. Studying the lexical characteristics of legal English is helpful and useful for us to improve our ability for using legal English correctly.

2.1 The Conservatism of Legal English

The English language has some mixed characters and English lexicon is also known as “cosmopolitan vocabulary” (Li Jianbo, 2003:16-21). In the process of the development of English there are three periods, the Old English, the Middle English and the Modern English. After these periods and with the interaction with other countries nowadays, it is inevitable that foreign languages be borrowed in from Latin, French, etc. Meanwhile, legal English is inherited continuously. Thus, legal English is provided with conservatism.

2.1.1 Words from Old French and Latin 

Since the year of 1066 when King William I, also known as Duke of Normandy, invaded England and took the English throne after a triumphant victory over King Harold, French replaced English as the language of the ruling classes for nearly 300 years. French also became the legal language until the end of 15th century and had a heavy influence on legal English. Although French is not the English legal language any more, many Old French words are reserved and some traces can be found. The main reason for the retention of Law French is that the legal meaning of such French lexicon is simple (Tiersma, 1999). 

Among the words in legal English that come from French sources are the followings:

allege(辩解), attorney(律师), assize(巡回审判), bar(法庭，审判台), bill(法案), inquest (审讯), hue and cry(追捕犯人时的叫喊声，通缉令), indictment(告发，控告), fine(罚款), forfeit(因犯罪而遭没收的东西), justice(正义), equity(公平), judgement(审判), crime(罪行), plea(抗辩), suit(诉讼), plaintiff(原告), defendant(被告), judge(法官), advocate(辩护者), petition(请愿), complaint(控告), summon(传票), punishment(惩罚), prison(监狱), pillory(颈手枷), parole(假释), proof(物证), etc..

From the above words, it is not difficult to find out that those French words have already been transformed by English language that it is not easy to figure out their French origin. In addition to this, there are some other French words still maintain their French pronunciation and spelling characteristics. It is easy for us to notice their French origin, such as: