Reference in English-Chinese Legal Translation: Human Translators Versus ChatGPT

Abstract

Reference is a device of grammatical cohesion; it refers to another element with the same semantic meaning; it can be categorized into personal reference, demonstrative reference, and comparative reference (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). This paper aims to delve into the grammatical cohesion in legal translation, focusing particularly on the translatability of reference in English-Chinese translation through a detailed case study. To this end, the International Code for the Protection of Tourists is chosen as the source text and is compared with two target Chinese translations: one by human translators and the other by ChatGPT (the fourth version). The data related to differences of reference items between English and Chinese are identified and marked. Based on Toury’s (2012) framework of descriptive translation studies, the study is qualitative and is conducted on the English-Chinese translation of reference in the legal text, the human translation, and the ChatGPT’s translation. The research reveals that three translation methods (literal translation, omission, and amplification) are used in translating reference items. It indicates that there are more advantages of human translators than ChatGPT in legal translation.