香港中文判決書的語言使用與語言規範

Earlier studies pointed out a number of language problems in the Chinese legal judgements in Hong Kong, including: 1) inconsistency of terms, 2) inappropriate adoptions of Europeanized grammar, which break Chinese language rules, and 3) use of dialectic words and grammar. This study has been conducted on a newly established database which consists of 1,089,242 Chinese characters and covers the Chinese legal judgements in Hong Kong from July 2000 to December 2010. Some Chinese legal judgements, which are translated from English legal judgements, are also compared with the original English versions. The authors suggest that 1) The Hong Kong government should establish a language planning institute to reinforce language normative work. 2) The government should conduct appropriate campaign to promote language norms to raise the language users' awareness of the language norms. 3) Legal professionals and linguists should work together to study the language phenomena deviating from norms and help standardize the legal language. They further recommend that 1) If the litigants' native language is Chinese, the legal case should be processed in Chinese and the judgements should be written in modern standard Chinese. 2) To improve the norms of translation for legal terms. 3) The quality of Chinese language in judgements should be enhanced in bilingual legal processes. The differences between Chinese and English should be clearly identified by legal professionals. When writing Chinese, the legal professionals should avoid the influence of European structures.