ENGLISH TRANSLATION STRATEGIES FOR VIETNAMESE MODAL VERBS IN LEGISLATIVE TEXTS: A CASE STUDY
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Abstract
The article examines how Vietnamese modal verbs are translated into English in legislative discourse, using the Law on Enterprises 2020 as a case study. It builds a parallel corpus of the Vietnamese statute (71,085 words) and its official English translation (48,513 words), then applies descriptive and contrastive analyses to map modal functions and their English realizations. Results show “phải” (387 occurrences) primarily marks binding obligation and is translated mostly as “shall” (336; 86.8%). “Có thể” (82 occurrences) signals permission/possibility and is rendered mainly with English modals, especially “may” (47). Although “cần” occurs 45 times, only one instance is truly modal, translated as “have to.” “Muốn” is lexical (desire) and translated as to want/to wish. “Sẽ” becomes “will” twice. Findings are indicative due to the single-text scope.
Keywords
legal discourse, modality, modal verb translation, translation strategy
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References
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