China: Language and law in translation

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Dan Guttman, a Fulbright scholar teaching at Shanghai Jiao Tong, Tsinghua and Beijing universities, writes on Bangor Daily News on the different notions of English terms in laws. The practicing attorney and lecturer of laws writes that "Differing traditions make translation more daunting."

The new global vernacular of governance - featuring terms like "transparency", "accountability", "NGOs," and "market measures" - is at work in classrooms and conferences in Beijing. But the new lingua franca flourishes independent of any common understanding of what words actually mean in divergent local settings. As China mixes markets and socialism, comparison and translation become both increasingly plausible and perhaps increasingly elusive.

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