Shall and its Thai translations in the ASEAN Double Tax Treaties: a corpus-based study
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Abstract
This study aims to reveal the functions of shall and its Thai translations in the ASEAN Double Tax Treaties. The comparisons were conducted based on three self-built legal corpora: an English monolingual comparable corpus (228,280 words), an English-Thai parallel corpus (146,334 words) and a Thai monolingual comparable corpus (1,173,485 words). This study, first investigated the frequency and functions of shall in the ASEAN Double Tax Treaties in the light of plain writing principles (Williams, 2011). It also examined the Thai translations of shall by focusing on the relationship between English texts and Thai translations, based on equivalence (Biel, 2014), source language shining through (Teich, 2003), and between Thai translations and Thai non-translated texts in a legal genre (Biel’s (2014) textual fit, and Teich’s (2003) normalization). The findings reveal that the plain writing principles are not adopted when it comes to shall and its translations. There is the evidence of equivalence (Biel, 2014) between the source text and translation. Also, the Thai translations of shall are oriented more towards their source texts which in turn, lessens the textual fit (Biel, 2014) and makes them different from comparable texts in the same language.
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