6.2 Li & Tian
Weidong Li and Qiang Tian. (2016). Translation between Mongolian and Chinese Languages in the Criminal Proceedings From the Perspective of Protecting Procedural Rights of Mongolian Defendants in China. International Journal of Law, Language & Discourse 6(2), 18-34.
Abstract: There are five minorities’ autonomous regions in China, including the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in Northeast area. In judicial practice, Chinese is the main language in the trials of the Region, while the judiciary shall be liable for providing free translation service if the defendant is a Mongolian who does not understand Chinese. This is a constitutional right for citizens in China, but this requirement had encountered many challenges in reality. For example, the Mongolian is a language for the nomadic nationalities which is closely related to their life. As many legal terms in Chinese are far away from their life, it is sometimes difficult for them to find an equivalent word in Mongolian. Furthermore, the traditional life and customary law of the Mongolian Nationalities is far away from the modern life and law of the Han Nationalities, and therefore, it is quite difficult for them to understand the legal theory applied nowadays in China. Moreover, China lacks those intellectuals knowing both Mongolian and Chinese languages. Apart from that, the problems of language barrier between the Mongolian and Chinese in the criminal trial have not be adequately addressed because the government has not fully realized the importance of language right for the minorities and thus it failed to provide sufficient financial and human resources. The translation problem in the trials involving Mongolian people will affect the judicial fairness and justice, which in turn will have impact on the solidarity and social stability of the borderland in China. As a result, the author argues to make further reforms in this respect, such as the government’s more attention and increased investment of financial and human resources, conduct in depth investigation on the language issues and find out the Mongolian languages that can match the meaning in Chinese. In this way can China improve its protection of the defendants and ensure the fairness and equity of the criminal trial.
Keywords: discourse information, information flow, information chunks, tree information structure
Category: Volume 6
