VAGUENESS IN LEGAL LANGUAGE:

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE CHINESE AND ITALIAN LEGAL TERMS OF AGENCY LAW

Riassunto

«Incertezza interlinguistica» (inter-lingual uncertainty) è un termine usato per la prima volta da Xxxxxxx Xxx per riferirsi all’«incertezza [che] sorge quando si conside- rano due lingue o quando una lingua viene tradotta in un’altra lingua». («Inter-lingual uncertainty in bilingual and multilingual law», Cao 2007a: 71). Dopo lo studio di Xxx incentrato sul diritto bilingue e multilingue, l’argomento è rimasto pressoché inesplorato. Questo studio vuole fornire un contributo al tema, studiando l'incertezza che deriva da un sistema giuridico monolingue quale quello cinese quando la sua terminologia viene interpretata in contrasto con l’italiano. Esso esemplifica l’incertezza semantica rispetto al contesto giurislinguistico italiano di due termini chiave quali wěituō 委托 e dàilǐ 代理 e dei loro composti, come ad esempio wěituō dàilǐ rén 委托代理人, usati nell’istituto della rappresentanza cinese. Sulla base di dati tratti da diverse fonti, tra cui archivi digitali di diritto e archivi di testi online nonché un corpus off-line di leggi cinesi, questo studio

(*) Acknowledgments. A word of thanks goes to Xxxx. Xxxxxxx Xxx (Xxxxxxxx Uni- versity, Australia) and Xxxx. Xxxxxxxx Xxxxx for commenting on two subsequent ver- sions of this manuscript. The anonymous referees who have improved this article by providing many sound comments and suggestions are sincerely thanked. The Institute of History and Philology (January-March 2018, and July 2018) and the Institutum Iurisprudentiae at the Academia Sinica of Taipei (September-December 2019) which enabled me to conduct a part of the research presented in this essay at their institutes as a visiting scholar (formerly affiliated with the University of Perugia) are both gratefully acknowledged. I also wish to thank Xxxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxx (LL.M) for having patiently discussed with me some legal aspects of the Italian law of agency, and Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxx (X.Xxxx., University of Perugia, Italy) for sharing with me his philosophical perspective on vagueness. All remaining errors are mine.

Part of this research was conducted under the Project of Excellence plan granted to the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at the University of Verona, Italy, by the former Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research for the project titled “Digital Humanities Applied to Foreign Languages and Literature” (2018-2022) (xxxxx://xx.xxxx.xxxxx.xx/xx/).

dimostra che i termini giuridici cinesi in oggetto sono semanticamente più oscuri dei loro

«equivalenti» italiani. Suggerisce inoltre che l’incertezza intralinguistica della lingua di partenza è particolarmente accentuata dai requisiti di chiarezza della lingua di arrivo. Sostiene, infine, che quando l’incertezza linguistica non è intenzionale e la terminologia della lingua di arrivo è meno incerta di quella della lingua di partenza, essa deve essere risolta nell’interpretazione interlinguistica.

1. Introduction

The term ‘uncertainty’ is a broad term used interchangeably with inde- terminacy by Xxxxxxx Xxx (2007a: 70) and here to refer to the indetermi- nate semantic feature of a language and to include vagueness, generality, and ambiguity (Xxx 2007a: 70; see also Xxxxx 1999).

Although uncertainty is found in any language, it used to be said to be a distinctive feature of Chinese (1) (Cao 2018b: 152), which has been said to be vaguer than other languages, such as English (Cao 2004; 2018a: 165; but cf. Xxxxxxx 2009). It is difficult to say if a certain language is semantical- ly opaquer than another, owing to the quantitative nature of the question, implying that we would need a method of quantifying vagueness (Mannoni 2021). However, it can be noticed that indeed there are Chinese words, in- cluding many Chinese legal terms, that are semantically opaque compounds, given that the semantic relationship linking the characters-morphemes com- pounding them is unclear. For instance, many Chinese legal terms are as opaque as, say, the English words ‘firefly’ and ‘firewater’, in which the word ‘fire’ has a different meaning, and the relationship between ‘fire’ and ‘fly’, or ‘fire’ and ‘water’ is not perspicuous. Take the word bǎoxiǎn 保险 for example, meaning ‘protect + risk = insurance/to insure/to be insured’ (2); what does the compound word bǎoxiǎnrén 保险人 ‘insurance/to insure/to be insured +

(1) In this study the focus is on the Chinese variety used in Mainland China, i.e. the territory within the People’s Republic of China falling under the direct jurisdiction of Beijing. The terms ‘China’ and ‘Chinese’ are thus related to Mainland China and do not extend to various territorial entities, such as Hong Kong, Macau and the contested island Taiwan (aka Republic of China or R.O.C.), where different laws and different language varieties using a different script are used. Consequently, in order to avoid any confusion, the Chinese script shown in this study is the one used in Mainland China (commonly known as jiǎntǐzì 简体字, ‘simplified characters’, as opposite to the ol- der form commonly referred to as fǎntǐzì 繁体字, ‘complex characters’). With the sole exceptions being cases where the cited texts date back to earlier than the policy for the simplification of characters implemented in China in 1956.

(2) Unless otherwise indicated, all the English translations in this article, rather literal on purpose, are the Author’s.

person/people’ mean? Who is this person? Is s/he the one who protects from the risk (i.e. the insurer) or, is s/he the one who is protected from the risk (i.e. the insured)? Although it can be noticed that bǎoxiǎn is a return loanword from Japanese with an acquired different meaning (Shi 2021: 69) (3), uncer- tainty of this kind is common in Chinese, owing to the presence of exocen- tric compounds (4). Suffice it to observe the following examples, whereby rén人 ‘person/people’ has different functions, sometimes acting as the head and sometimes as the argument of the compound words, which can be either endocentric or exocentric (cf. e.g. Xxxxxxxx & Xxxxxxxx 2007). If we did not know the meaning of these words aforehand, it would be impossible to infer it by solely knowing the meanings of their constituents:

1) jīngrén 惊人 ‘to astonish + person/people = astonishing’

2) dòngrén 动人 ‘to move + person/people = moving’

3) shīrén 诗人 ‘poetry + person/people’ = ‘person [who writes] poetry = poet’

4) qīnrén 亲人 ‘kin/kiss/relative/marriage + person/people = close relative/s’

5) lièrén 猎人 ‘to xxxx + person/people = hunter’

6) bǐrén 鄙人 ‘low/mean/vulgar/to despise/to disdain/scorn + person/people = I/ my/myself (honorific)’

7) diūrén 丢人 ‘to lose + person/people = to lose face’

For example, it is only by looking at the meanings of the words in (1) and

(2) that we can maintain that rén is the argument of the left-side head. Indeed, there is no morphological indication that (5) should be interpreted differently than (1) and (2). It is only by checking its meaning in a dictionary that we can tell that rén is an agentive suffix here, as it is in (3) and (4). What kind of rén is the rén in bǎoxiǎn rén? The fact that these words are clear to a native speaker or that they become clearer when put in contrast with other related words (e.g., bèi bǎoxiǎn rén 被保险人 ‘pass + bǎoxiǎn rén’) does not imply that they are so clear when encountered alone or studied interlingually.

‘Interlingual uncertainty’ (hereinafter ILU, to be pronounced /ˈiːlu/), the focus of this study, is a term first used by Xxx to refer to the linguistic “uncertainty [that] arises when two languages are considered or when one

(3) A hypothesis could be put forward that semantic uncertainty is especially pre- sent in loans. I am thankful to the anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

(4) Xxxxxxxx and Xxxxxxxx (2007, 223) argue that the great semantic opacity of exocentric compounds that Xxxxxxx and Xxxxxxx (2006, in ibid.) highlighted is not pro- ductive in Chinese. Since the dataset that Xxxxxxxx and Xxxxxxxx took into account consists in a list of 672 disyllabic neologisms, further research is encouraged to study whether their argument can be upheld for the Chinese legal language.

language is translated into another language” (Cao 2007a: 71). In the legal context, ILU arises from various types of legal texts, including legislative texts and private legal documents (Cao 2007a: 72). Xxx’x study focusses on legislative texts in bilingual and multilingual systems of laws to the ex- clusion of the other types of legal systems, and shows that it is the court that has to approach and ascertain meaning according to statutes and other considerations. After her study, the other types of ILU, such as that arising from monolingual law, remained unexplored.

In this study, I focus on some legal key terms relating to the law of agency.

But what is agency? In modern societies, agency, broadly defined as “the fiduciary relationship that arises when one person (a ‘principal’) manifests assent to another person (an ‘agent’) that the agent shall act on the principal’s behalf and subject to the principal’s control, and the agent manifests assent or otherwise consents so to act” (American Law Institute, quoted by Xxxxxx 2010: 1), is an indispensable legal concept. As has been pointed out,

[agency] assists in organizing the division of labour in the national and international economy by making it possible for a principal greatly to extend his individual sphere of activity by having one or more persons act for him. In addition to the individual principal, a principal may be composed of a group of persons carrying on a trade or business by way of a partnership, a registered company, or another kind of corpo- rate entity. The need for legal representation in some form has therefore increased as business units have come to involve transactions conducted at a distance […]. (Xxxxxx-Freienfels 2018)

Therefore, agency is frequent at the national and international level and so is the use of agency-related documents, which need to be interpreted just as frequently. Thus, agency and the relevant terminological issues deserve close scrutiny.

This study aims to provide a contribution to the field of linguistics by studying the uncertainty arising from a monolingual law such as that of Mainland China when its terminology is contrasted with a European (5)

(5) It is acknowledged that the cross-linguistic phenomenon discussed in this study may not apply exclusively to when Chinese is interpreted against Italian. Indeed, owing to some of the typological features that Italian shares with other European languages, such as other Romance and Germanic languages, it is likely that many of the pheno- mena exemplified in this study for the Chinese-Italian pair exist for other languages as well. However, due to space constraints, the Chinese-Italian combination only was considered.

language such as Italian. It exemplifies the intralingual uncertainty of the use of two key-terms of the law of agency, dàilǐ 代理 ‘to represent’ and wěituō 委托 ‘to entrust’, and how it complicates interlingual understand- ing. It then illustrates the procedure that the Italian interpreter (6), such as the legal scholar, the legal professional or the legal translator, has to follow to solve it by starting from the study of the terminology of the Italian law of agency and then contrasting the Chinese terms with the Italian ones. The method includes etymological reconstruction. In so doing, my study shows that the analysed Chinese legal terms are more semantically obscure than their Italian equivalents. It proposes that the intralingual uncertainty of a language (source language, SL) is further enhanced by the requisites of clarity of the language against which is interpreted (target language, TL). It argues that when linguistic uncertainty is not intentional and the TL is less uncertain than the SL, it has to be resolved in cross-linguistic interpretation. It finally offers a discussion on the implications of the study of ILU for Chinese linguistics.

2. From intralingual uncertainty to interlingual uncertainty Uncertainty is part and parcel of the language of law and cannot be

avoided. It has been said to be functional to law, to be detrimental to law, or to have no function at all in law (Xxxxxxxxxx 2015; Xxxxxxxx 2007; Xxxxxxx 2011; Schneider 2007; Xxxxxx 2002). Such different positions notwithstanding, it is ubiquitous in any language, as well as in many spe- cialised languages, including the language of the law (Xxxxxxxx 2000). In legal practice, legal disputes are often caused by real or allegedly different interpretations of one term, phrase, or syntactic structure (Xxxx 2008; Trie- bel 2009: 154; Xxxxxx 2002), and they may lead to different verdicts.

An area of inquiry in linguistics is the study of how semantic uncertain- ty arises when one language is contrasted with another, and how is resolved. Notably, as opposed to what happens in other jargons, in the language of law both intralingual and interlingual uncertainty often need to be resolved. As has been illustrated,

(6) As in semiotics, the term ‘interpreter’ is used here to broadly indicate any lan- guage user who interprets a language. Such use of the term has, thus, a much broader acceptation than when is used to indicate the professional who provides oral translation.

The court is never entitled, on the principle of non liquet (it is not clear), to de- xxxxx the duty of determining the legal meaning of a relevant enactment (Xxxxxxx 2002: 14). It must provide a single correct interpretation in case of uncertainty. (Cao 2007a: 81)

This is different to what happens in other special languages such as, say, literary or poetic language, where one can abstain from providing a final interpretation. The judge has no such right. Similarly, when interpreting monolingual law, sometimes the interpreter has to provide an interpreta- tion and resolve the uncertainty that is present in the SL. For instance, the Chinese language has no gender, no number, and no tense indication. When one interprets Chinese against any typologically different language that specifies these categories, as many Romance languages do, either con- text is sufficiently clear to retrieve all the relevant pieces of information required by the TL, or the interpreter cannot but invent such meanings and attribute them to the SL words. In this sense, intralingual uncertainty may be a source of ILU.

One noticeable feature about indeterminacy is that the semantic fea- tures involved in it are, as Magni (2020: 13) notes, a ‘matter of [semiotic] signs’ (un fatto segnico). As such, they lend themselves to a variety of inter- pretations and labels depending on the interpreter’s unique vision of the meanings involved in relation to their area of research and the purpose of their study. Consequently, the taxonomies that different scholars propose for indeterminacy and its realisations, such as ambiguity and vagueness, are not univocal (7). After all, as Xxxxxxxxxx and Xxxxxx (1987: 187) famously underlined in their Dialectic of Enlightenment, “Classification is a condition of knowledge, not knowledge itself, and knowledge in turn dissolves classi- fication.” In this sense, drawing from different studies, the following serves as a working taxonomy that we can use to observe the phenomena under investigation in this study.

There are various types of intralingual uncertainty that may result in

ILU, these being intentional and unintentional uncertainty, morpho-gram- matical uncertainty and ordinary uncertainty. Next, I am going to provide a brief illustration of these categories (on this, see also Xxxxxxx 2021).

(7) For instance, Magni (2020: 18-22 and 38-65) recognises two types of indeter- minacy: ambiguity and vagueness. She identifies eight types of ambiguity (i.e., written, spoken, semantic, lexical, syntactical, lexical categories-related, morphological, prag- matical) within the macro distinction between actual or potential ambiguity, following McArthur (2005: 24 in ibid.).

With respect to the intention of the producer of a text (whether written or spoken) towards their text, we can distinguish two types of indetermi- nacy in language, i.e. intentional vs. unintentional indeterminacy. As the names suggest, the first is caused by the speaker’s intent to purposely speak vaguely. As we are going to see, this type of indeterminacy is not found in the key-terms of the Chinese law of agency, for its indeterminacy is not functional to any purposes that the lawmaker may have wanted to achieve. Reversely, in law, intentional indeterminacy has been observed in deceptive ambiguity used inter alia by police or prosecutors (Shuy 2017), or when the uncertain meaning of a term is intentionally used as a form of negotiation to paper over the fact that the parties or the legislators had conflicting views and have not reached a sound agreement (Cao 2007a: 71; Marmor 2014: 97). Importantly, intentional indeterminacy is part and parcel of the speak- er’s message and has to be preserved in translation. As I will show, the same does not go for unintentional indeterminacy, which needs to be solved in interlingual communication whenever the TL so requires.

Morpho-grammatical uncertainty is the uncertainty that arises from the

way words are composed or arranged in a sentence (8). It appears to be com- mon in the Chinese language of the law of agency. This type of uncertainty has been related to the way Chinese words are formed (e.g., Cao 2018b: 150; Xxxx, Xx & Xx 2009: 37-38). In this sense, it should be first noticed that the most significant morphological phenomenon in Chinese is com- pounding, as it accounts for 70-80% of Chinese words (Xxxx et al. 1999; Xxxx 2006, in Xxxxxxxx & Xxxxxxxx 2007: 208), although, in Chinese, it is often impossible to draw a clear-cut distinction between it and deri- vation (Arcodia & Xxxxxxxx 0000: 249). The basic units of Chinese word formation are lexical morphemes, many of which cannot be used as such in a sentence as they are bound morphemes, as opposite to free morphemes, which are fewer in number (Arcodia 2011: 91). Notably, the phonological and orthographical forms of a morpheme does not vary if it is used as a bound or as a free morpheme (ibid.: 95). So, the same morpheme can be bound, free, and have different meanings, some of which may be available only when the morpheme is in a certain form, either bound or free (ibid.: 97). Additionally, Chinese is a prototypical analytic language: as said, it has no inflection, no gender, no number, and the semantic relationship between

(8) For the notion of grammatical uncertainty, see also Xxxxx’x (2020: 18) taxo- nomy of ambiguity, where the scholar similarly recognises lexical ambiguity and struc- tural (or syntactical) ambiguity.

the characters-morphemes of a word is often opaque. Due to these linguistic features of the Chinese language, morpho-grammatical uncertainty in Chi- nese is often unintentional (as also morphological ambiguity is in general; cf. Magni 2020: 50). When ascertaining the meaning of Chinese words, the interpreter may need to arbitrarily attribute grammatical markers, such as gender (9), number, or verb tense, to a word. The resulting interpretation of a lexical item into any less analytic (10) and more explicit TL will, therefore, necessarily be less uncertain than in Chinese.

Ordinary uncertainty (Marmor 2014) consists in indeterminacy not being manifest and evident, yet when we are prompted to state whether its meaning includes or excludes an entity or a concept, we cannot say for sure, and we realise that its meaning is uncertain. A similar definition is some- times used for vagueness (e.g. Antia 2007: xv), although Xxxxxxxx holds that “vagueness is a property of concepts”, rather than of words (2007: 22).

(9) Normally, when the gender of a noun cannot be inferred from its meaning, it cannot be understood from any of the components making the character used to write it. For instance, xxxxxx 老师 means ‘teacher’ and may refer to either a male or female teacher, and the word carries no gender information in its written form. The word dìdi (弟弟, ‘brother’) exclusively refers to a male sibling, and does not carry any indication to gender in its written form. Indeed, rarely does the ‘male’ component (男) appear in characters at all: for instance, the Chinese-French GRN dictionary lists only seven characters using the male component “男”, of which only two refers to males (i.e., xxxxxx 舅舅 ‘mother’s brother, uncle’ and xxxxx 甥 ‘sister’s child, nephew’); however, in both these cases, the meaning of the noun is gender transparent and the script does not provide any additional information that one cannot already infer from the meaning of the word itself. The character for ‘woman’ (女) appears as a component in characters for words that do not necessarily relate to women, as in nú (奴) ‘slave’, xián (嫌) ‘su- spicion’ (cf. e.g. xxxxxxxxxx 嫌犯人 ‘suspect of a crime’), xìng (姓) ‘family’s name’, rú (如) ‘if ’, fáng (妨) ‘impede’, etc. An often quoted example used to show that the Chine- se script may carry an indication as to the gender of a name is the third person pronoun tā, written 她 when it means ‘she’ and 他 when it means he. However, it has to be noted that although in the first case the left component is 女 ‘woman’, suggesting that the pronoun is used for women, in the second the left component is ‘person’ (亻) – not ‘man’ (男). Indeed, such distinction in the way third person pronouns are written basing on the gender is a modern invention that has no trace in pre-modern Chinese. Suffice it to note that Classical Chinese (6th-2nd centuries BCE) did not have specialised third person subject pronouns, using demonstrative pronouns (e.g., bıˇ 彼 and xxx 夫) for the purpose. Similarly, the other personal pronouns generally did not carry any information about gender (see e.g. Scarpari & Andreini 2020: 231-239).

(10) Although ILU may be caused by certain features of the language which is tran-

slated, I posit that the degree of ILU depends on both languages considered in the se- mantic process. It may be the case than when Chinese is interpreted against any analytic language whose grammar categories stem from the Latin-Greek grammar tradition, ILU is more visible than when Chinese is translated into other languages. The anonymous reviewer is thanked for this suggestion.

Ordinary uncertainty includes the sub-types of generality and ambiguity. A general word is one that refers to “any one of a number of things whose differences are not denied or necessarily overlooked” (Xxx 2007a: 70). An oft-quoted example is H. L. A. Xxxx (2012: 126)’s word ‘vehicle’ (see also Marmor 2014: 92). If a city ordinance stipulates that no vehicle is allowed in the park, entrance is very likely to be forbidden to motor vehicles; but are bikes or skateboards also forbidden? This type of indeterminacy is frequent in law but is not so evident. A term is ambiguous when it has more than one possible meaning. Ambiguity thus includes homonymy and polysemy (cf. Xxxxxxxx 2002’s taxonomy, used by Xxxxxx 2007: 17). An oft-quoted ambiguous Chinese word which will be discussed next is quán 权, and it appears in the Chinese law of agency. It may mean ‘authority’, ‘privilege’, ‘power’, and also ‘rights’. Although these meanings may be connected and similar in non-specialised language, they are not synonyms in law. As has been observed, these meanings are often equally possible in the Chinese legal context, sometimes even in the same phrase (Cao 2018c; Xxxxxxx 2018; Xxxx Xxxx 2018). As we will see hereafter, some of the Chinese key-terms for agency are ordinarily uncertain with respect to their Italian ‘equivalents’. When two languages are considered, intralingual uncertainty may be- come particularly visible. So, what happens when Chinese legal terms have to be interpreted against a European language such as Italian? Some word- ings that would be less uncertain in some circumstances may become more so in cross-linguistic communication. This further type of uncertainty is

termed ILU (Xxx 2007a) and is addressed next.

3. Interlingual uncertainty arising from the Chinese law of agency ILU is an area that has not received sufficient attention with regard to

the language of law, let alone when the Chinese legal lexicon is interpreted against any Western language other than English, such as Italian. When it comes to legal language, the interpretational procedures at the lexical level are further complicated by ILU. The legal languages involved in the trans- ferral of meaning are necessarily bound to their respective culture (the so- called languaculture; Agar 1994), including the legal culture. Quite unnat- urally, cross-linguistic interpretation – including translation – prompts one language to convey with its words the concepts of the other. This requires attention to subtle yet substantial differences between the terms in two lan- guages, including legal differences.

Unintentional ILU arises from intralingual uncertainty, that we have just seen, and is enhanced by the TL. It occurs when difficulties in ascer- taining the meaning of a term or a cluster of terms with respect to the TL are created or emphasised and cannot be ignored when contrasting two lan- guages, such as in legal translation. It is caused by anisomorphism, that is, the overarching mismatch between different languacultures, including legal languacultures (Cao 2007a; Xxxxxxx Varó 2009).

As said, to exemplify a case of ILU from the Chinese law, here I used the key terminology of the Chinese law of agency with respect to Italian. As background information, it is noted that legal linguistics studies on Chi- nese-Italian are scarce (11), and, as of the time of writing, no bilingual legal dictionary exists for these languages. Consequently, interpreters have to re- sort to Chinese-English dictionaries, thus using English as an intermediate language, a misleading procedure that forces the interpreter to understand the Chinese terminology based on Civil Law through the lens of An- glo-American Common Law. In order to avoid taking such risk, the com- mon procedure to ascertain the meaning of Chinese words is considering the meaning of the individual morphemes that compose them (including their old meanings), the study of the character components, and the study of the words in context. It is, thus, a complex approach which cannot be readily compared with that taken in the study of other languages. Such is the approach I used for the key terms under analysis.

With regard to morphological analysis of Chinese words, it should be

pointed out that one thing is starting from the meanings of words to then explain how they are constructed (i.e., from meaning to form), but another is ascertaining the meanings of words without knowing it aforehand and try- ing to guess it by looking at how they may be constructed (i.e., from form to meaning). These two approaches go in two opposite directions. For instance, in 2007, Xxxxxxxx xxx Xxxxxxxx used linguistic data retrieved from a list of neologisms to study compounding. Their morphological analysis relies on the existence of a predeterminate basic word category and the necessity of knowing aforehand the meaning of a compound before analysing it accord- ingly. In other words, in my view, the analysis that the authors make is not intended to clarify the meaning of words, but to analyse how such meanings are morphologically constructed. For example, in order for the authors to claim (ibid.: 211) that dúfàn 毒贩 is [N +N]N, they had to find aforehand

(11) For cross-linguistic studies on Chinese-Italian legal language, see e.g. Masini 1993; Colangelo 2015; Mannoni 2015.

that dúfàn is to be interpreted as ‘drug dealer, narcotrafficker’. Hadn’t they known the meaning of the word, it would have been impossible for the schol- ars to argue that the compound is of a [N+N]N subordinate type, because, generally speaking, dú can be a noun, a verb (as in dú lǎoshǔ 毒老鼠 ‘to poi- son mice’), or even a verb-like adjective (as in dúpǐn 毒品 [A+N]N ‘poisoning

+ products’ = ‘drugs’). Hadn’t the authors known the meaning of dúfǎn before they analysed it morphologically, the following six combinations would have been all equally possible: [N+V]; [N+N]; [V+V]; [V+N]; [A+V]; [A+N]. We would also be unable to know the output of these combinations, as this often cannot be predicted, and it is generally context sensitive. A different method of morphological analysis of Chinese compounds was developed by Arco- dia and Xxxxxxxx (2018). The authors applied the principles of construction morphology (CxM) analysis to Chinese complex words and showed that this method is more successful in accounting for the word formation in Chinese, as it does not rely on the issue of word category, and it also enables us to “re- main agnostic as to some of the most problematic distinctions” (ibid.: 249), including those between standard categories in morphology, e.g. root, word, affix, derivation (12), compounding, etc., which are particularly problematic in Chinese. The authors found that Chinese compounds may be easily ac- commodated in a series of templates, which can account for any process of word formation, including constructions in which a lexeme develops a new meaning, polysemy, and neologisms, “presenting things from the perspective of the speaker, rather than that of the linguist” (ibid.: 249). Since to my understanding these approaches are not specifically designed to ascertain the meanings of words by starting from their form, I wasn’t able to use them here for the specific purposes of this study (13).

Back to the words of agency, when interpreting Chinese agency docu-

ments we encounter different terms whose meaning is highly uncertain, many of which relate to two key-terms, i.e. dàilǐ and wěituō. They are used both in ordinary and legal language. This is the first difficulty these terms pose: they are legal terms, but their use is not exclusively legal, and when they are used in the Chinese legal language, their meanings are unclear, as this study will show. Indeed, although their meanings are clearer in ordinary language, they are unintentionally and contextually uncertain in the legal language.

(12) On derivation in a CxM perspective, see also Arcodia (2011).

(13) I am thankful to the reviewer for pointing me to these studies, from which I could benefit massively and that I incorporated in this study whenever I was able to, within the limits of my abilities.

For instance, dàilǐ is linguistically made up of two characters, i.e. dài and lǐ. Dài means to replace something or someone (but it also means ‘peri- od, generation’); lǐ means to manage and to administer an affair (14). These meanings were already available for these characters in ancient times, when they also had other meanings. For instance, dài appeared in the Discourses of the States (Guóyǔ 國語), dating back to the 4th century BCE:

[…] 吾將以公子重耳代之。

[…] I am going to replace him with Xxxxx’xx, the Duke’s son. (Available from the Chinese Text Project database; my emphasis)

The character lǐ has a long history in the Chinese culture, as well as several meanings. In its written form consists of “王” ‘jade’ + “里”, a pho- netic component now read lǐ. The dictionary GRN indicates that the oldest meanings include ‘cut the jade [following its natural veins and order]’, ‘veins of stones’ and hence ‘regularity’, ‘order’, ‘reason, ratio’, ‘principle’, ‘rule’, ‘truth’, and, in a more legal sense, ‘judge’ and ‘administer justice’. Xx plays a key role in the history of Chinese thought, whereby it has been interpret- ed as meaning ‘principle, pattern, reason’. Its meanings and interpretations varied according to the period and philosophical environment in which it was embedded, including Buddhism. During the Northern Song period (960-1127 CE), it developed into what has been defined as ‘perhaps the most important concept’ (Xxx 2003: 364). Notably, none of these meanings is reflected in today’s usage in the Chinese agency law.

The two characters dài and lǐ combined together into a single com-

pound word, dàilǐ, literally mean ‘to replace someone to manage some- thing’. This dàilǐ word is a modern word which was not used in ancient times. Some of the reportedly (Qu 2015: 458) most representative Chi- nese-English dictionaries, both general and specialised, translate it as ‘agen- cy’, ‘procuracy’, ‘procuration’, ‘proxy’, ‘representation’, ‘substitution’ (Xx Xxxxxxx & Xxx Xxx 1998: 125), ‘surrogate’, ‘act, acting’ (Xxx Xx 2001: 123), ‘commission’, ‘power of attorney’ (Xxxxx Xxxxxxx 2000: 96), ‘acting on behalf of ’ (“Dàilǐ” - Xxxxxxx Dictionary), ‘deputy’, etc., with all these words having substantially different legal meanings. No precise legal infor- mation can be deducted from the foregoing, even though the above Eng- lish translations, outside of the legal context, may be said to be sufficiently clear and alike in meaning.

(14) On lǐ and its meanings in the history of Chinese thought, see e.g. Rošker 2012; Xxx 2003; Xxxx, Xxx & Guan 2020.

Similar considerations can be made for wěituō, a term made up of two words, wěi (委) and tuō (托), both indicating the entrusting of a matter to a trustworthy person. This meaning was already attached to these words thousands of years ago. For instance, wěi was used in its modern acceptation of entrusting in Xxxx Xxxx’x Historical Records or Records of the Grand Histo- rian, finished around 90 BCE. In a section of the work, it says that

王年少，初即位，委國事大臣

When the King was young, and he ascended to the throne, he entrusted [wěi] the state affairs to his prime minister. (Xxxx Xxxx 90 BCE, Ch. 6, available from the Chinese Text Project database; my emphasis)

Tuō was used in Mencius, dating back to ca. 300 BCE, with a similar meaning:

xx謂齊宣王曰: 「王之臣有託其妻子於其友，而之楚遊者。[…]」 Xxxxxxx said to Xxxx Xxxx of Qi: “Suppose that one of the king’s subjects entru- sted [xxx] his wife and children to his friend and journeyed to Chu. […]” (Xxxxxxx 300 BCE?, Xxxxx Xxx Xxxx XX, 300BCE/2011: 20; available from the Chinese Text Project; my emphasis)

So, wěi and tuō implied a fiduciary relationship, as agency does nowa- days (15).

(15) However, wěi and xxx had also other meanings that may be more poorly con- nected to modern agency, and this confuses which meaning is to be considered when ascertaining the meaning of the character-morpheme in the law of agency. For instance, the character wěi consists in the character for ‘grain’ (禾) above that for ‘woman’ (女). The philological dictionary Le Grand Ricci Numèrique (Association Xxxxx and Xxxxxxx xx Xxxxxxx 2001, hereinafter: GRN) indicates that in oracle bones that were mostly used for divinatory purposes during the Shang dynasty (1600-1046 BCE), wěi referred to the name of a deceased dame to whom sacrifices were offered. It later started to be used in the Zuǒ Zhuàn (左传; ca. 400 BCE), the commentary to the ancient Chinese chronicle Spring and Autumn Annals (Xxxx Xxx 春秋), to indicate the act of prostrating with the whole body (as in wěizhì 委质), as well as the act of making an offer, and entrusting the care of something to somebody. However, in the work attributed to the Confucian phi- losopher Xxxxxxx (Xxxx Xx xx, ca. 300 BCE) it meant ‘to abandon’, ‘to leave’, as well as ‘to throw in a pit’. In one of the foundational texts of Taoism, the Xxxxxx Xx (庄子, ca. 3rd century BCE) it meant ‘fall to the ground’. As can be seen, no legal meaning was traditionally attached to this character-morpheme. As to tuō, the character for the word,托, it has a variant, 託 that was used in China prior to the simplification process (cf. note 1 supra) and which is still used in other territorial entities outside Mainland China, including Taiwan. The variant of the character used today is made of 扌 ‘hand’ + tuō 乇, a phonetic and semantic component meaning ‘to rely on, to depend on’. The older (i.e. complex) form of the character differs only for the left component, where 訁 ‘speech’ instead of 扌 ‘hand’ is used. The right component, tuō 乇, was glossed as depicting the

Today, wěi and tuō appear together in wěituō, which is translated vari- ously as ‘authorize’, ‘bail’, ‘delegate’, ‘consign’, ‘entrust’, ‘relegate’, ‘trust’ (Xx Xxxxxxx & Xxx Xxx 1998c: 821). In some legal terms that I will address next, tuō still occurs individually as a free morpheme, as it did in ancient times. Again, no precise legal information can be deducted from these more modern interpretations.

Although dàilǐ and wěituō are words, in the Chinese law of agency they also behave as morphemes forming terms whose meanings are no less un- certain than those of the two of them. These terms are dàilǐ rén 代理人, (‘dàilǐ + person’), bèi dàilǐ rén 被代理人 (‘pass + dàilǐ + person’), wěituō rén委托人 (‘wěituō + person’), wěituō dàilǐ rén 委托代理人 (‘wěituō + dàilǐ + person’), shòu tuō rén 受托人 (‘to.receive + tuō + person’), and shòu quán wěituō shū 授权委托书 (‘document of + giving/receiving + quán + wěituō’). For instance, in relation to one of these terms, shòu quán wěituō shū, we can note that shòu may refer both to the act of giving and to that of receiv- ing, as these in fact constitute one single event framed (16) in two different

‘leaves of a plant’ and particularly ‘a drooping spike; the upper part of the character pier- ces a horizontal line [most likely representing the soil], under which the root is found’ (乇：艸葉也。从垂穗，上貫一，下有根。象形。[…]; Xx Xxxx 121 AD). A spi- ke depends on the plant to which is attached, and the plant depends on the soil to grow. The word tuō 乇 and thus its two compounds <托> and <託> mean ‘to depend on; to rely on’. Indeed, tuō is also used to mean ‘to hold in one’s hands’, as in tā tuō zhe xxxxx xxxxx xxx qù le 他托着盘子上楼去了(3sg tuō-dur tray go-up floor go-away pfv), me- aning ‘He went upstairs holding a tray [in his hands]’. Back to the meaning ‘entrusting a matter to somebody’ that tuō has in wěituō as found in the agency law, such meaning is hence metaphorical, as the ‘hand’ component 扌 appearing in the character variant托 suggests. Indeed, under the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) as prompted in the ’80s by Xxxxxx and Xxxxxxx (1980), a metaphor is commonly “defined as understanding one conceptual domain [termed target domain] in terms of another conceptual domain [termed source domain]” (Kövecses 2010: 4). A conceptual metaphor maps some of the features of a source domain onto a target domain. Source domains are general- ly more tangible or perceptible, intersubjectively accessible and image-rich than target domains, which are more abstract, intersubjectively inaccessible or personal, and much more poorly delineated (cf. e.g. Xxxxxxxxx et al. 2014: 904 and Xxxxxxxx & Xxxxxxxx 2014, both discussed in Winter 2019). In this sense, entrusting a matter to some- body is an abstract concept (a target domain) that is conceptualised in Chinese as hol- ding in one’s hands and being physically connected to something, as is the case of the spike connected to the plant from which it originates (in cognitive linguistics, the area of scholarly enquiry that welcomed and further developed Xxxxxx and Xxxxxxx’x theory, small caps or, in their place, full caps are used to indicate concepts rather than words. Thus, war is a concept, while ‘war’ is a word and a linguistic instantiation of the concept war, as other words, such as ‘weapon’, ‘embattled’, ‘attack’, etc. are).

(16) The term “frame” is used in many fields of linguistics, such as cognitive lingui-

stics, for the property of languages that makes us see only some aspects of an event, whil-

fashions. Indeed, shòu means ‘to give’ in words such as shòu kè 授课 (‘to give class’) or shòufěn 授粉 (‘to give pollen, i.e. to pollinate’), but it means ‘to take’ in shòushì 授室 (‘take a wife’), and so it did in ancient times, as in

xx沒，文公授之 […]

[When] Xxxx Xxx [of Jin] died, and Xxxx Xxx took it [i.e., the reign] […]

(Xxx Xxxxx xxx (III century BCE), Nan Er 难二, available from the Chinese Text Project; my emphasis)

So, when shòu appears with quán as in shòu quán wěituō shū that I have just mentioned, does it mean ‘to give quán’ or ‘to take quán’? Additionally, quán has, as I said, various meanings, such as ‘power(s)’, ‘privilege’, ‘author- ity’, ‘right(s)’, etc. Thus, what is the meaning of shòu quán wěituō shu? So far, in light of the above, the ‘literal’ meaning of the term can only be put as ‘a written document of giving or receiving quán + wěituō’ – an interpretation which is insufficiently clear in order to derive any more precise meaning in the legal context, let alone a translation. Similarly, many of the above-men- tioned terms (e.g., dàilǐ rén, etc.) are morpho-grammatically uncertain, since the semantic relations between their constituents are unclear. For instance, what does dàilǐ rén (‘dàilǐ + person’) mean? And how is the term construed with respect to wěituō rén (‘wěituō + person’)? And, consequently, what is the meaning of wěituō dàilǐ rén (‘wěituō + dàilǐ + person’)?

As can be seen, the uncertainty of the foregoing terms is not intentional.

The meaning of some of these terms is intrinsically general, such as that of dàilǐ and wěituō, or ambiguous, such as that of quán and shòu, or morpho-grammat- ically uncertain, as a result of the semantic opacity of the compound words.

As we will see in the next section, Italian legal language as a TL does not allow for such uncertainty. In the following two sections I will empirically show the procedure through which the legal interpreter solves ILU in the key terms under analysis. I will thus start from the TL terms, and I will contrast these with the SL terms in the section after the next.

4. Agency terminology in the target language

Both linguistic and legal aspects are involved when contrasting legal terms inter-lingually. Thus, in this section, I present and illustrate the legal

st hiding others – as if we were looking at it through a frame. It is said that “[a] language frames the way you see the world” (Xxxxxx & Xxxxxx-Xxxxxx 2006, 367).

meaning of the key terms of the law of agency in the TL. This enables us to know which terms are available in the TL for the interpretation of those in the SL, and what their meanings are and how they differ. In this regard, a notable aspect that needs to be highlighted here is that when we interpret words and thus concepts from a language into another, we are bound to interpret them according to the languaculture of the TL, not just that of the SL. Indeed, in solving ILU, the interpreter needs to choose a term from a limited num- ber of TL terms and consider what the legal differences between the SL and the TL are, and whether they can be disregarded or not.

So, what are the key terms of agency in Italian law? What do they mean, and what are their linguistic features?

Agency (rappresentanza) today in Italy is generally treated and studied as part of ‘substitution in activities’ (sostituzione negoziale) (Pugliatti 1965), which is historically and etymologically related to the Roman notion of negotia aliena gerere (‘manage others’ activities’) (Bisazza 2003: 1). As is de- duced from article 1388 of the Italian Civil Code (hereinafter c.c.), Italian agency (rappresentanza) occurs when an agent (rappresentante) acts in the interest of a principal (rappresentato) so that the actions undertaken by the agent affect the principal’s legal position. From the linguistic standpoint, it should be noted that the root and suffix words in the above Italian terms make them morpho-grammatically and semantically clear. For instance, the suffix -anza in rappresentanza (agency) suggests that most likely the word is a noun. The words rappresentante and rappresentato are, hence, connectedly clear, for they manifestly belong to the category of rappresentanza, as the common root rappresent- suggests, indicating the one who represents (rap- presentante) and the one who is represented (rappresentato), respectively, as their suffixes imply – being -ante an agentive suffix, and -ato a nominalised past participle corresponding to English ‘represented [person]’.

There are various types of agency, according to the aspects that we take

into consideration.

As to whether the agent acts in the name of the principal or not, depends on whether it is direct agency (rappresentanza diretta) or indirect agency (rap- presentanza indiretta) (17). In the first type, the agent acts in the name of the principal (a phenomenon known as contemplatio domini), and thus the actions undertaken by the agent directly affect the principal’s legal position, as if the

(17) Indirect agency (rappresentanza indiretta) is also termed in legal Italian ‘inter- position in managing affairs’ (interposizione gestoria) or ‘interposition of real person’ (interposizione reale di persona); see Xxxxxxxxx 2011: 223; Xxxxxxx et al. 2011: 346.

principal was acting in person. In the second type, the agent acts in his/her own name, and thus a subsequent act is needed to transfer the legal effects from the agent to the principal. Although the legal specificities are not entirely manifest in the terms under analysis, the way these terms are formed does give a hint of the mechanisms involved. In fact, ‘direct agency’ cannot but mean that agency happens directly, whilst ‘indirect agency’ clearly means the contrary.

As background historical and linguistic information, it should be not- ed that part of legal scholarship affirms that Roman law had only this latter type of agency, i.e. indirect agency (see e.g. Xxxxxxxx 1906 cited in Bisazza 2008: 7). However, Bisazza (2003; 2008) has shown that direct agency also existed. A notable example made by the scholar to show the existence of this type of agency in ancient times is the use of the concept of iussum in Roman ancient legal texts. The word can be intended either as ‘order’ or ‘authorization’, two very different words in English implying different legal notions. Indeed, iussum could either be used to indicate the order of the principal having the potestas (power) toward their agent to obey him and perform for him an action, or the authorization of the principal so to allow a person to do something for them. For instance, the iussum of a pater (father) or the dominus (master) toward their children or slaves was necessarily to be obeyed (see Xxxxxxx 2003, 2008: 23-passim) – in which case, the word iussum indicated an order rather than an author- ization, as it was the case in The Institutes of Roman Law by Xxxxx dating back to ca. 170 AD (Gai Institutiones 2.86-87, quoted in Bisazza 2003: 4). Given that children and slaves were not entitled to own anything (ni- hil suum habere potest; ibid.), should they purchase anything, it would be inevitably and directly the father or the master’s. Therefore, iussum could be said to imply direct agency. Reversely, with the Roman society entering a new economic and commercial expansion from the 3rd century BCE, those who had the potestas needed trustworthy and expert persons to carry out their business in distant places (see Bisazza 2003: 7). Consequently, individuals – both children and slaves – gained the status of persons and lost that of objects, and iussum thus started to indicate the authorization given by the pater or the dominus, rather than an order. Such was the case, for instance, with the iussum given by the pater to the nubendi (spouses). Interestingly, the bond created by iussum was gratuitous: even when the iussum was given for commercial and business purposes. Indeed, it was based on friendship, trust and exchange of favours. When iussum was used to indicate an authorization to a trustworthy person, rather than an order to a slave or children, another word, mandatum, was sometimes used in

its place. This is evident from an excerpt from Xxxxxx’ Digesta (17.1.1.4, quoted in Bisazza 2008: 64; my translation), dating back to ca. 530 CE:

[…] mandatum nisi gratuitum nullum est: nam originem ex officio atque amicitia trahit, contrarium ergo est officio merces.

[…] if mandate is not gratuitous, it is null and void: indeed, its origin lies in kindness and friendship, thus, payment of a fee is against it.

When slaves, children and other individuals with no potestas gained the status of free individuals who could freely and autonomously decide wheth- er to accept the mandatum or not, the word mandatum started to indicate an agreement, rather than an order to perform. Such etymology is reflected in today’s legal usage of the Italian mandato, to which I will refer next.

Besides the two types of agency, direct and indirect agency, which we have just seen, there are other types of agency that need to be presented here as they will be useful later when interpreting Chinese agency against the Italian correspondent. According to the different sources of agency, article 1387 c.c. defines two types of agency: legal agency (rappresentanza legale or ex lege), consisting in the agency created by any sources of law such as court decisions (e.g., guardianship) and statutory laws (e.g., parental au- thority); and voluntary agency (rappresentanza volontaria), the one formed at the will of the parties. It should be noted that these terms are transpar- ent: the Italian word for ‘legal’, and especially the Latin (18) wording ex lege (meaning ‘from law’) plainly indicate that the source of the relevant type of agency is law, while ‘voluntary’ indicates that this type of agency is grounded on the will of the party.

One more linguistic fact to observe is what the Italian wordings for

the designations of the documents creating direct and indirect agency are. This is important and will be useful below when I will compare the Italian terms with the Chinese ones. Voluntary direct agency is created in Italy by means of power of attorney (procura), whilst indirect agency typically comes in the form of contract of mandate (contratto di mandato). Power of attor- ney (hereinafter PoA) in Italy is the act by which a principal or mandator (xxxxx procura or mandante) grants an attorney-in-fact or mandatary (procu- ratore (19) or mandatario) the power to represent them. The fact that what is

(18) For the study of Latin legal terms, see inter alia De-Mauri 1940; De Meto 1986; Xxxxxxxx & Scivoletto 1994; Xxxxxxx 2005.

(19) The attestation in legal sources of the Latin word procurator from which the Italian word procuratore comes from dates back to 111 BCE and 45 BCE with the Agri- culture Law and Tabula Heraclensis, respectively (Bisazza 2008: 194).

granted by means of PoA are powers (poteri) and not rights can be under- stood, inter alia, from article 1387 c.c., in which the word ‘powers’ is used. Since no right is created or transferred in an Italian PoA, the attorney-in-fact is under no obligation to perform (Salomoni 1997: 20-22). Indeed, article 1387 c.c. uses the term ‘power of agency’ (potere di rappresentanza), and article 1388 c.c. uses the term ‘faculty’ (facoltà) – but not ‘right’ – under- lining that the agent is entitled but not obliged to perform the principal’s instructions. Consequently, the attorney-in-fact may be appointed as such without them knowing: PoA in Italy is a unilateral act, meaning that the attorney-in-fact does not need to agree with it (nor to sign it). Linguistically, we can note that the names of the parties to the PoA are only partly trans- parent: for instance, owing to the meaning of the suffix -ante that I have explained above, mandante surely means ‘s/he who mandates’; similarly, the word dante procura necessarily means ‘s/he who gives a PoA’, given that xxxxx is an agent noun derived from the Italian verb dare (‘to give’). Xxxxx- er, it is only after the interpreter has realised this that they can understand the meaning of the words mandatario and procuratore.

As to the document used to create indirect agency, i.e. the contract of

mandate, it is defined by article 1703 c.c. as the agreement by which one party commits to carry out one or more acts in the interest of the other (20). Practically speaking, since mandate is binding for the two contracting par- ties, the contract bears the signatures of both. The terms for the designations of the parties to a mandate are understood from articles 1704 and 1705 c.c., where the principal is termed mandator (mandante) and the agent manda- tary (mandatario). From the terminological and legal perspective, it has to be noted that these names are the same as those we saw earlier for the par- ties to an Italian PoA: ‘mandator’ and ‘mandatary’ are thus two ambiguous designations, indicating either the parties to a PoA or those to a contract of mandate. Such ambiguity is explicable, if anything. Indeed, agency is an evolution of mandatum (see also footnote 6 above). Mandate and PoA are frequently merged into a single document in the so-called mandate with agency (mandato con rappresentanza), in which the principal/mandator grants direct agency powers to an attorney-in-fact/mandatary, specifically binding them to perform (Trimarchi 2011: 225). In such document, it is

(20) Original Italian version of article 1703 c.c.: “Il mandato è il contratto col quale una parte si obbliga a compiere uno o più atti giuridici per conto dell’altra”. See Bisazza (2003, 2008) for a historical account of the relationship between Roman-time iussum, mandatum, and modern agency.

not possible to distinguish which part is the mandate and which is the PoA (see Xxxxxxxxx cited in Xxxxxxx 2006: 27).

So far, we have seen the meaning of the different key terms relating to Italian agency. These constitute all the possible terms into which the SL terms can be interpreted. As is clear from the foregoing, Italian legal terminology is precise, largely using one term for one legal notion. When it exceptionally does not, as in the case of the two synonymic terms that we have just seen, there are reasons for this. This is different to what we are going to see in the next section on the agency terms in the Chinese legislative language.

We can now proceed to contrast the SL terms with those of the TL that we have just seen.

5. Contrasting Chinese agency terminology with the Italian terms

In this section we will observe the interlingual indeterminacy arising from the Chinese agency terms as found in private legal documents with respect to Italian legal terminology.

At the time of writing (21), agency in China was regulated by three sources of law that needed to be considered to ascertain the meaning of the relevant agency terms. These are the Common Principles of Civil Law (1987, 2009 amendment; Mínfǎ Tōngzé, hereinafter MFTZ), a fundamen- tal statutory law similar to a civil code; the General Principles of Civil Law (2017; Mínfǎ Zǒngzé, hereinafter MFZZ), which was gradually replacing the MFTZ and was going to be incorporated in the new Civil Code of China; and the Contract Law (1999; Hétóng Fǎ; hereinafter HTF). The presence of three sources of law regulating one single matter, namely agency, can be contrasted to the Italian law of agency, in which, as seen, the sole source of law is the Civil Code.

Firstly, some of the key terms for Chinese agency can be found in article 63 MFTZ and 161-162 MFZZ. Both these statutes have a specific section (Sec. 4 Par. 2, and Sec. 7, respectively) titled dàilǐ. By reading the aforemen- tioned articles in the light of the information we gained for the TL, it becomes clear that dàilǐ means ‘agency’ (rappresentanza) when is used in the title of the

(21) This article was finalised prior to the adoption of the new Civil Code (Mínfǎ Diǎn 民法典) in Mainland China, which took effect on January 1, 2021. However, a section of the Civil Code, termed General Principles of Civil Law (Mínfǎ Zǒngzé) was adopted earlier and was in force at the time of writing the article, so it could be consi- dered for the analysis of inter-lingual indeterminacy.

Section, although its meaning changes when is used as a word component. Owing to the different linguistic features of Italian and Chinese morphology, this phenomenon does not happen in the Italian terms that we have seen in the earlier section. For instance, article 63 MFTZ lays down the following:

(8) 第二节代理

第六十三条公民、法人可以通过代理人实施民事法律行为。代理人在代理权限内，以被代理人的名义实施民事法律行为。被代理人对代理人的代理行为，承担民事责任。依照法律规定或者按照双方当事人约定，应当由本人实施的民事法律行为，不得代理。

Section 2 Dàilǐ (代理)

Article 63 Citizens and legal persons may perform civil acts through a dàilǐ rén (代理人). Within the limit of the quán (权) granted, the dàilǐ rén performs civil acts in the name of the bèi dàilǐ rén (被代理人). Bèi dàilǐ rén bears civil respon- sibility for what the dàilǐ rén performs. Any civil acts for which the law or any agreements (yuēdìng 约定) between the parties establish shall be performed by the běnrén (本人) cannot be performed through agency.

A number of comments are warranted here on dàilǐ, as well as on two other uncertain terms běnrén and quán. Firstly, as to dàilǐ appearing in the title, literally made of ‘substitute + manage’, it cannot be translated literally as, say, ‘substitute and manage’ or ‘manage by replacing’, as these are not legal categories in the Italian law of agency, as we have seen. With respect to Italian, dàilǐ here has to be interpreted as ‘substitute [somebody] to manage [their activities]’, similarly to negotia aliena gerere mentioned earlier. Thus, dàilǐ as used in the title of Section 2 is a noun to be intended as Italian agency (rappre- sentanza). Yet, when is used in the term dàilǐ rén, the semantic relationship be- tween dàilǐ (‘agency’) and rén (‘person’) is morpho-grammatically uncertain: is dàilǐ a name here (i.e., [N+N]N)? Or is it a verb (i.e., [V+N]N)? And what is the relation of dàilǐ with the constituent rén? For instance, even though one can rightly posit that here rén is an agentive noun, and thus according to Xxxxxxxx and Xxxxxxxx’x taxonomy (2007) dàilǐ rén would be an endocentric subordinate compound (22), this is not the sole hypothesis one can reasonably form, as in Chinese there are compound words ending in -rén whereby rén is not an agentive suffix, e.g. jīngrén ‘to astonish + person/people = astonishing’ (and not *‘person who astonishes’), dòngrén ‘to move + person/people = mov- ing’ (but not *‘person who moves’), diūrén ‘to lose + person/people = lose face’, as we have seen in Section 1. So, owing to the morphology of Chinese, the meanings of many words cannot be ascertained without a margin of error by

(22) I am thankful to the anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

looking at their forms. This morpho-grammatical uncertainty is not found in the Italian legal terms of the law of agency that we have seen. In the above ar- ticle, in the light of the context, dàilǐ rén appears to be intended as ‘the person who performs dàilǐ’ ([V+N]N), i.e. the Italian attorney-in-fact or mandatary (procuratore or rappresentante or mandatario). Consequently, bèi dàilǐ rén, with bèi being a passive marker, is the person being dàilǐ-ed, i.e. the principal (xxxxx procura or rappresentato or mandante).

From the legal perspective, article 61 MFTZ and article 162 MFZZ es- tablish that the agent acts in the name of the principal and the acts performed by the agent affect the principal’s legal position: this means that Chinese agen- cy may correspond to Italian direct agency, not to indirect agency.

Secondly, another confusing term běnrén appears in articles 63 and 66 MFTZ and article 161 MFZZ. In many Chinese laws the term is a pronoun meaning ‘one’ or ‘one’s’ or ‘in person’ (23), whereas in formal Chinese docu- ments, it means ‘I the undersigned’. However, in the above-cited article and in the Chinese law of agency, běnrén has the meaning of ‘principal’, as noted by Xxxx Xxxxx (1987: 130) who says that ‘bèi dàilǐ rén is also termed běnrén’ (“被代理人,或称本人”). This is baffling, and is a source of ILU, given that when one finds běnrén out of the above provision cannot be sure whether it means ‘one’, ‘one’s’, ‘in person’, ‘I the undersigned’, or ‘principal’. One possible explanation for such uncertainty could be that the word is ambigu- ous, and such linguistic ambiguity is purposefully exploited: běnrén is made of běn and rén, with běn meaning ‘basis, main’, and rén meaning ‘person’. Thus, the word can also be interpreted as ‘main person’, i.e. ‘principal per- son’ – and, thus, ‘principal’. In this sense, the word would be a calque from English. In fact, the MFTZ are not exclusively based on Civil Law. During the drafting procedure, China considered other Western sources, including Anglo-American law (Xxxx 2011: 416), and thus a literal translation could

(23) ChinLaC (Chinese language Law Corpus), a corpus of modern laws of Chine- se-speaking territorial entities that is being created under the Project of Excellence plan (2018-2022) granted to the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at the University of Verona, has 344 instances of the word běnrén. Examples of the use of běnrén when it means ‘one’, ‘one’s’, or ‘in person’ include ‘As to employees, if any of the following reasons leads one [them, i.e. the employees] to suffer any injury or death while at work, [...]’ (职工因下列情形之一导致本人在工作中伤亡的, [...]); ‘when em- ployment is temporarily suspended not at one’s will’ (非因本人意愿中断就业); ‘If the Judge intends to resign, they need to file a written request in person’ (法官要求辞职，应当由本人提出书面申请); ‘Physicians […] shall obtain the […] consent from the patient himself/herself […]’ (医师[...]应当[...]征得患者本人[...]同意) (my emphasis). The corpus was explored by using #LancsBox 6.0 (Xxxxxxx, Xxxxx-Xxxxxxx & XxXxxxx 2021), a corpus manager.

have entered China through Japan, that also uses ‘běnrén’ (read hon’nin in Japanese). Another explanation could be that since a Chinese PoA starts with a phrasing like ‘I the undersigned’ describing who the principal is, then the Chinese word běnrén for this phrasing may have become the Chinese term for ‘principal’ itself. The third explanation could be that both the above ex- planations are true, and that Chinese exploits the ambiguity of běnrén to be intended as ‘I the undersigned (and) principal’. Interlingually, the word běnrén can be translated as ‘rappresentato’ (represented, ‘principal’) when it comes to a generic outline of the law of agency, such as the one laid down by article 63 MFTZ and 162 MFZZ, and as ‘xxxxx procura’ or ‘mandante’ when it appears in a Chinese PoA. Thus, within three articles of two statutes we find two terms for one notion, i.e. bèi dàlǐ rén and běnrén for principal. When these equivalent terms are found outside that very same provision where their synonymity is clear, such as, say, in private legal documents, they are a source of uncertainty, as their meanings are not synonymous as they may be in law. This contrasts with the Italian legal terms of the law of agency, in which none of the terms that we have seen has a similar ambiguity.

Thirdly, as for quán, mentioned earlier, this is a very ambiguous term,

broadly indicating the competency to do something, and its meaning is un- certain intralingually and interlingually. As said, in law it may be intended as ‘power’, ‘rights’, ‘authority’, and also ‘privilege’ (cf. Mannoni 2018). Interlin- gually, in the light of the agency provisions in the TL, such as articles 1387 and 1388 c.c. discussed earlier, quán may be translated as ‘power(s)’ (poteri) or ‘faculty’ (facoltà). Nevertheless, this proposition can be equally proved or dis- proved depending on how we proceed, for different acceptations are equally plausible, making quán an ambiguous word having no equivalent in Italian. For instance, if we consider that many legal notions were imported to China via Japan (Xxxx 2011: 418), and that the Japanese provision on agency – in which quán, read ken (and written 権), appears – is very similar to the Ger- man one (Xxxx-Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxx & Xxxx Xxxx 2002: 177), we can ascertain the meaning of quán by finding the meaning of the Japanese term ken in the light of the German term it translates (24). This enables us to understand the

(24) It is worth noting that between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, many Japanese intellectuals were profoundly influenced by German scholars. Consider for instance the influence on Xxxxx Xxxxx by German philosophers (specifically Xxxx and Xxxxx) (Xxxxxxxx-Xxxxx 2017); see also Xxxxx (1965). The Au- thor would like to thank Prof. J. A. Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxx (Department of Religion, Wil- liams College) for having pointed to the above references in personal communication with Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx (Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University, PhDc),

meaning of ken, and hence of quán, interlingually. Article 99 of the civil code of Japan (Minpō Ten 民法典) lays down that “A manifestation of intention that the agent expresses in the interest of the principal within the limits of ken granted to him shall affect directly the principal’s legal position”, and this phrasing is calqued from article 164 par. 1 of the German civil code Bür- gerliches Gesetzbuch (commonly abbreviated as BGB), which uses the word Vertretungsmacht (‘-macht of agency’). For our purpose, we should note that the word Macht comes from Middle and Old High German Maht meaning ‘might, ability’, and, notably, ‘power’, and is totally unrelated to Recht, ‘right’ (Xxxxx 1891: 222). Thus, this seems to be an indication that Macht in the German BGB, and thus ken in the Japanese Minpō, and consequently quán in the Chinese MFTZ and MFZZ is to be intended as ‘power’, rather than ‘right’. However, we come to a very different conclusion if we consider that article 63 MFTZ and article 161 MFZZ use the term yuēdìng (约定, ‘to agree and establish’) to indicate that the parties (i.e., the principal and the agent) are entitled to agree that some acts are not done by the agent. This is important because it shows that there is a major difference between the Italian and Chi- nese agency in terms of being unilateral for the agent. Many Chinese docu- ments that fall under the category of agency do bear the signature of both the principal and the agent (25), a graphical evidence that the Chinese document in question may also be based on an agreement between the parties thereto, as in the Italian mandate with agency, in which the principal has the right to expect that the agent performs the agreement, and the agent is bound to execute it. Under this interpretation, quán means ‘right’. No definite univocal interlingual interpretation for this word can be provided. Both intralingually and interlingually quán is ambiguous, and whatever the interpretation, its unintentional ambiguity cannot be maintained in the TL: it is either ‘powers’ (poteri) or ‘faculty’ (facoltà) or ‘rights’ (diritti). No equivalent ambiguous word exists in Italian, as we have seen in the earlier section.

As for the uncertain key-term wěituō, it is found in various provisions,

and it is confusing. Importantly, it appears in combination with dàilǐ, as in wěituō dàilǐ, in articles 64 MFTZ and 163 MFZZ: the meaning of this compound word is morpho-grammatically uncertain. It can be interpreted as ‘to wěituō a dàilǐ ’, or ‘wěituō AND dàilǐ ’ or, a modifier-modified con-

who is also kindly acknowledged.

(25) See for instance the samples made available online by The Shanghai Lawyers Webpage (xxxx://xxx.xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx/xxxxxx.xxxx) and Beijing Kaitai Law Firm (xxxx://xxx.xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx/Xxxxx.xxxx?Xxx00000), as well as the guidelines for draf- ting a Chinese PoA outlined by Xxxxx and Xxx (2011: 26).

struction, ‘dàilǐ OF wěituō’ . Since article 163 MFZZ establishes that “Dàilǐ can be wěituō dàilǐ or fǎdìng dàilǐ ”, it is understood that the article sets out two types of dàilǐ, and thus that the interpretation of the term is ‘dàilǐ of [a] wěituō [type]’. In order to resolve this uncertainty interlingually with respect to Italian, we need to consider article 163 MFZZ, which lays down that

第一百六十三条 […] 委托代理人按照被代理人的委托行使代理权

Article 163 […] A wěituō dàilǐ rén executes the agency powers according to the prin- cipal’s wěituō.

But who is this wěituō dàilǐ rén? As it was the case with dàilǐ rén that I have discussed above, the term wěituō dàilǐ rén is semantically and mor- phologically opaque, until we understand its meaning. Since the one who executes the agency powers is the agent, wěituō dàilǐ rén is to be intended correspondingly in the TL as rappresentante (‘agent’). Therefore, since it is understood from the above provision that, in it, wěituō has the meaning of mandatum (i.e., the instruction to perform), the wěituō dàilǐ type of agency is to be intended as ‘voluntary agency’ (rappresentanza volontaria). As can be seen, the degree of clarity of wěituō dàilǐ, having various contextual in- terpretations, and the correspondent Italian translations such as ‘voluntary agency’ and ‘agent’ is not the same – being the Chinese term more ambigu- ous and semantically opaque than the Italian equivalents.

Even more terminological confusion arises when the terms for the des- ignations of the legal documents creating direct or indirect agency are con- sidered; these will be addressed next, before a final discussion on the linguis- tic aspects involved is offered.

5.1 Confusing Agency Documents

As anticipated, wěituō and dàilǐ are the two key-terms in agency termi- nology whose meaning is highly uncertain. This is true for their use in the above provisions, and it is the more so in the terminology relating to the documents used to create agency.

Articles 65 MFTZ and 165 MFZZ use the term shòu quán wěituō shū, a vague term literally meaning ‘a document of wěituō of giving/receiving quán’, with the same quán that I have just discussed. Its uncertainty can be resolved interlingually basing on two somewhat complex considerations. Firstly, and chiefly, the MFZZ uses such Chinese term within the Wěituō Dàilǐ section

2, indicating that this is the document creating voluntary agency, i.e. a PoA (procura). Secondly, before the 2017 clarification implicitly provided for by the MFZZ, the same conclusion would be achieved by considering that ar- ticle 65 MFTZ lays down that this document shall indicate the name of the agent (dàilǐ rén) and bear the signature or the stamp of the principal – for which word, notably, another confusing term is used, wěituō rén (委托人), virtually meaning ‘person who entrusts’ (with -rén being an agentive suffix), or ‘to entrust + person/people = entrusting’ (cf. jīngrén ‘to astonish + person/ people = astonishing’), or any other meaning non-predictable from the mean- ings of its components (cf. any exocentric compound, such as diūrén ‘to lose

+ person = to lose face’). Thus, given that wěituō rén is the other party to the agency document shòu quán wěituō shū besides the agent (dàilǐ rén), wěituō rén is the third term for ‘principal’ and ‘mandator’, besides bèi dàilǐ rén and běnrén. Additionally, there is no indication in article 65 MFTZ that the agent is obliged to perform, and it is legally impossible that by simply signing such document the principal binds someone who is not willing to be bound (cf. Xxxx Xxxxxx 2000: 118). This is similarly impossible under Italian law, as we can understand from article 1372 c.c. founded on the principle res inter alios acta, tertio neque nocet neque prodest (‘a thing done between two people does not harm nor benefit a third person’) (Xxxxxxxxx et al. 2010: 803). Thus, con- sidering that such provision does not require (although it does not exclude) that the agent signs the shòu quán wěituō shū, this document is not (necessar- ily) an agreement and hence a mandate, but a PoA. The Italian translation of shòu quán wěituō shū is thus procura (PoA), although, reversely to the Chinese case, Italian PoA cannot be signed by both the principal and the agent; in fact, as illustrated earlier, a PoA is not an agreement, unless it forms a part of a contract of mandate, in which case it is termed accordingly as contratto di mandato. As to shòu quán appearing in the designation of the Chinese PoA, the Chinese statutes on agency do not clarify whether it means ‘to confer’ or ‘to receive quán’. In the designation itself, it can mean both, for a PoA is a document conferring powers from the perspective of the principal, while it is a document to receive powers from the perspective of the attorney-in-fact. It is noted that many Chinese PoAs, such as those we can retrieve online (26), use shòu quán as a transitive verb, in which quán is not considered an ob- ject, but is grammaticalized to form a verb together with shòu, and thus shòu quán takes a direct object indicating the beneficiary upon whom powers are conferred. In this case, shòu quán is ‘to confer powers’ (‘conferire poteri’), and

(26) See for instance xxxxx://xxx.xxxxx .xxx/xxxxxxx/0000000.

the other interpretation ‘to receive powers’ cannot be sustained. In this sense, shòu quán is the default legal term for the word ‘to empower’ (cf. Xia’s (2012) English-Chinese Dictionary of Law).

Besides the provisions that we find in the MFTZ and MFZZ on Chi- nese direct agency, some relevant provisions are also specifically addressed in Section 21 (articles 396 to 412) of the HTF. Prior to the adoption of the Civil Code on 1st January 2021, these articles regulated the wěituō hétóng (委托合同), literally ‘Contract of Wěituō’. As we will see, the term means contract of mandate, although it differs substantially from its Italian ‘equiva- lent’. As a matter of terminology, the HTF uses two terms relating to wěituō to indicate the parties to the contract of mandate, that is, wěituō rén that we just saw for ‘mandator’, and shòu tuō rén for ‘mandatary’. The meanings of both these terms are difficult to ascertain, for their literal translations are not perspicuous. In fact, the meaning of the latter can be ascertained only by understanding the meaning of the former first: since wěituō rén is, as we have just seen, ‘mandator’ (mandante), then shòu tuō rén has to indicate the ‘person who receives a tuō/mandatum’. Additionally, and misleadingly, wěituō rén and shòu tuō rén are also used in the Chinese legal vocabulary to indicate the settlor and the trustee in a trust relationship, as is the case in article 2 of the Trust Law of China (2001) (27). This is further indication of how the terms under scrutiny tend to be uncertain in meaning.

In order to contrast the legal meaning of the ‘equivalent’ words for ‘con-

tract of mandate’ in Chinese and Italian, we need to consider article 402 HTF, which establishes the following:

Article 402 A contract entered into by the mandatary in his/her own name and a third party within the limits of power conferred on him/her by the principal directly affects the principal’s legal position, provided that such a third party is informed of the agency relationship, and that there is no evidence proving that the contract was entered into in order to exclusively bind the mandatary and the third party (28).

This provision differs from what Italian legislation provides for the man- date, in that it lays down that the agent enters into a contract in his/her own name and yet it directly affects the principal’s legal position. This is not pos-

(27) It is noted that the Trust Law (Xìntuō Fǎ 信托法) has not been incorporated into the Civil Code, thus the confusing use of shòutuōrén and wěituōrén persist.

(28) Original Chinese version of article 402 HTF: 受托人以自己的名义，在委托人的授权范围内与第三人订立的合同，第三人在订立合同时知道受托人与委托人之间的代理关系的，该合同直接约束委托人和第三人，但有确切证据证明该合同只约束受托人和第三人的除外。

sible under Italian law, according to which, in the absence of contemplatio domini, the agency is indirect, and the principal’s legal position cannot be affected, unless a subsequent act is performed. It is worth noting that the existence of such phenomenon is in fact a contradiction only if compared with the Italian Roman-law based jurisdiction. In fact, in Common Law jurisdictions, the possibility for the agent to act in his/her own name and directly affect their principal’s legal position is not infrequent, for the only requisite for such a phenomenon is that the agent acts in someone else’s in- terest, including someone whose name is not revealed (so called undisclosed principal; cf. Trombetta-Panigadi 2003: 4). This is also explained in the of- ficial Interpretation of the Contract Law of China (1999), clarifying that such an application of agency is the result of the adaptation of the legal notion of Anglo-American agency, which was imported to xxxxxx legal and business relationships with Anglo-American countries, and on the basis of treaties and conventions on agency in the international sale of goods (Xxxx Xxxxxx 2002; Xxxx-Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxx & Xxxx Xxxx 2002: 179, 186).

Finally, besides the statutory terminology for agency that we have dis-

cussed so far, non-standard legal terminology that is not found in statutes also exists in China, and it is a further source of confusion and ILU for the in- terpreter. For instance, a PoA-like document was termed ‘certificate of dàilǐ’ (dàilǐ zhèngshū 代理证书) in an article (Xxxx Xxxxxxxx 2017) reported in a WeChat newsfeed about the patient’s rights when being admitted to hos- pital; the attorney-in-fact was termed bèi shòuquán rén (‘person being given quán’ 被授权人) and shòu wěituō rén (‘person of receiving a wěituō’ 受委托人). This is not an isolated case of non-standard use of the legal terminol- ogy, and it is confusing: for instance, the PoA to appoint an attorney-at-law is sometimes termed lǜshī wěituō shū 律师委托书 (‘document + wěituō + lawyer’; Xxx Xx Xxxx, n.d.) or shòuquán lǜshī wěituō shū 授权律师委托书 (‘document + wěituō + lawyer + giving/receiving quán’ (29)), and these terms are lexically opaque and interlingually uncertain with respect to pre- cise Italian legal terminology. Non-standard designations also exist for the contract of mandate, an example of which can be found on the webpage of the Department of Finance at Wuhan University, where a wěituō dàilǐ shū委托代理书 (‘document of voluntary agency’) sample is proposed. Addi- tionally, wěituō is often used as a verb meaning ‘to entrust’ or ‘to appoint

(29) For instance, the term was used in a document uploaded by a user in 2017 (accessed February 19, 2018) on the Baidu Wenku platform (xxxxx://xxxxx.xxxxx.xxx/ view/baee16b6f71fb7360b4c2e3f5727a5e9856a273d.html).

somebody’, as a sample document retrieved on a Chinese database does (30). The Chinese laws do not use wěituō as a verb, and thus its legal meaning as a verb is uncertain, and it becomes interlingually uncertain if it is to be found in PoAs or Contracts of Mandates, as there are no reference statutes that the interpreter can consult. The Italian interpretations in these cases would not be univocal, being ‘nomina e costituisce suo procuratore’ (appoints as one’s attorney-in-fact) in PoAs, or ‘nomina suo mandatario’ (appoints as one’s mandatary) in Contracts of Mandates.

6. Implications and conclusions

The following Table 1 resumes the terminological correspondences to which this study has come and shows some (31) of the literal interpretations of the Chinese terms of the law of agency in contrast with their legal mean- ings in Italian. Grey cells indicate semantically opaque Chinese terms whose literal meaning can hardly be related with their legal meaning owing to the various reasons illustrated in the foregoing discussion. Non-standard terms are marked in grey as indeterminate by default, in that their meanings are not grounded in statutes, and there is, thus, even more uncertainty as to what they may mean.

Table 1: Chinese uncertain terms of the law of agency vs Italian terms.

Chinese	Literal meanings of the Chinese terms	Italian (English)
Terms containing wěituō (委托) or tuō (托)
wěituō or tuō	to.entrust	mandato, mandatum (mandate)
shòu quán wěituō shū	to.give/to.receive + power/ privilege/authority/right + to.entrust + written. document	procura (Power of Attorney)

(30) In the sample document uploaded to xxxxx://xxx.xxxxx.xxx/xxxxxxx/0000000 (accessed February 25, 2020), it says xiàn shòuquán wěituō (现授权委托 , ‘Here- by empowers and entrusts ’).

(31) Owing to the fact that many Chinese morphemes and words do not have a basic word category, Table 1 shows only some of the possible meanings of the word constituents.

wěituō dàilǐ	to.entrust + to.manage. on.behalf.of.somebody	rappresentanza volontaria (voluntary agency)
wěituō rén	to.entrust + person	in a PoA: xxxxx procura or mandante (principal or mandator); in a contract of mandate: mandante (mandator). Note: settlor in a trust relationship
wěituō dàilǐ rén	to.entrust + to.manage. on.behalf.of.somebody + person	in general: rappresentante (agent); in a PoA: procuratore or mandatario (attorney-in- fact or mandatary)
xxxx xxx rén	to.receive + to.entrust + person	mandatario (mandatary) in a contract of mandate. Note: trustee in a trust relationship
wěituō hétóng	to.entrust + contract	contratto di mandato (contract of mandate)
Terms containing dàilǐ (代理)
dàilǐ	to.manage.on.behalf. of.somebody	rappresentanza (agency)
wěituō dàilǐ	to.entrust + to.manage. on.behalf.of.somebody	rappresentanza volontaria (voluntary agency)
bèi dàilǐ rén	pass + to.manage.on.behalf. of.somebody + person	in a PoA: xxxxx procura or mandante (principal or mandator)
wěituō dàilǐ rén	to.entrust + to.manage. on.behalf.of.somebody + person	in a PoA: procuratore or mandatario (attorney-in-fact or mandatary)
dàilǐ rén	to.manage.on.behalf. of.somebody + person	in a PoA: procuratore or mandatario (attorney-in-fact or mandatary)
Other key-terms
běnrén	one / one’s / in person / I the undersigned / main person	rappresentato (principal)
quán	power / privilege / authority / right	poteri; diritti; facoltà (powers, rights, faculty)
Non-standard terms
wěituō shū	to.entrust + written. document	contratto di mandato (contract of mandate)

wěituō dàilǐ shū

to.entrust + to.manage. on.behalf.of.somebody + written.document

contratto di mandato

(contract of mandate)

dàilǐ zhèngshū

to.manage.on.behalf. of.somebody + written. certificate

procura (Power of Attorney)

As can be seen by simply counting the grey cells, many Chinese legal terms in the law of agency are semantically obscure with respect to their Italian ‘equivalents’. This implies that the interpreter faces considerable dif- ficulties when ascertaining their meaning against more transparent languag- es, such as Italian.

As said, ILU is sometimes caused by intralingual indeterminacy, includ- ing morphological aspects of the SL. In this regard, Table 2 below highlights the way the Chinese words-morphemes combine in the above-illustrated terms of the Chinese law of agency. In the table, arrows indicate the direc- tion of formation of new words, from monomorphemic and monosyllabic characters-morphemes to polymorphemic words.

Table 2: Combinations of the Chinese ‘words-morphemes’ of the law of agency.

As can be seen, the linguistic use of these keywords is somewhat con- fusing. This results in semantic uncertainty and interlingual indeterminacy.

A number of implications can be drawn from the foregoing discussion. Firstly, at the micro-level of the study of ILU from the Chinese law of agency, we have seen that the use of the key-terms wěitūo and dàilǐ is confused and is a source of indeterminacy. The semantic relationship between the morphemes that make these words is semantically obscure, and the meanings of these key- words can hardly be ascertained by the interpreter when these terms are found in private legal documents, outside of the statutory provisions that regulate them and give them more (not absolute) consistency. Thus, for instance, there is no linguistic reason why wěituō rén ‘to.entrust + person’ means mandator, but wěituō dàilǐ rén ‘to.entrust + to.manage.on.behalf.of.somebody + person’ means mandatary. The way these terms are used in statutes is the only information we can rely upon when ascertaining their meanings, although, notably, their use is inconsistent, as is the case with wěituō rén or shòu tuō rén, also appearing in the Trust Law of China, and with wěituō meaning mandatum, but wěituō dàilǐ meaning voluntary agency. Additionally, non-standard terms are also used in legal documents and informative materials, and this is a further source of ILU. This is different to many Italian or English terms, such as those we have seen in this study, in which their linguistic form often clarifies the grammatical category they belong to as well as their meanings. For instance, mandante (mandator) is more transparent than wěituō rén, as in wěituō rén we are unable to see what the relation between the characters-morphemes is. Similarly, owing to the morphol- ogy of Chinese, wěituō does not change form when is used as a noun or as a verb. As we have observed in the foregoing analysis, this makes unclear how sim- ple morphological structures are to be interpreted, as is the case of wěituō dàilǐ.

Secondly, we have seen that when we find unintentional uncertainty at

the terminological level, it cannot be maintained in cross-linguistic interpre- tation and shall be solved if the TL is less uncertain than the SL, such as the Italian language of the law of agency is to the Chinese one. As we have seen from the foregoing exemplification, one possible procedure to deal with ILU between two languages of the same legal system is by identifying the key terms and their legal meanings in the TL, and then going back to the SL and ascertaining the terms in light of the TL. In this regard, meta-lingual analysis may also be useful to assess the meanings of a vague term, as we have seen for the word quán and its Japanese and German reconstruction, although the lack of a similarly ambiguous term in TL prompts the inter- preter to expunge ambiguity in translation. In fact, as noted, interlingual terminological uncertainty is TL-driven, as it depends on whether the terms in the SL are sufficiently clear for the requisites of the TL. In the exemplified case of Chinese-Italian cross-linguistic interpretation, they are not.

Many years ago xx Xxxxx proposed that legal translation does not raise extreme difficulties if it is done between two genetically distant languages that are used in countries based on the same legal system (32) (de Groot 1987: 798). However, this seems to be hardly the case of Chinese and Italian. As we have seen, it is true that such relationship between the two legal cultures allows for the existence of agency in both countries, and for a similar law, al- though significant differences are present in the HTF, which is partially based on Common Law. Some of the linguistic features of the Chinese language make its legal terminology particularly uncertain when interpreted against Italian, significantly complicating interlingual translation into this language. Additionally, since Chinese laws and legal documents are based on Civil Law, they do not provide any definitions of legal terms, contrary to what happens in many Anglo-American jurisdictions where the meaning of terms is often clarified in legal documents, in statutes, or in cases by judges, whose defini- tions have a binding force (Xxxx & Xxxx 1997: 208-209; Cao 2018b: 160). The fact that the Italian legal terminology of the law of agency is less vague than the Chinese one, and that the two languages belong to two countries based on the same legal family, implies that disambiguation is necessary, and unavoidable. In fact, while it is true for some types of uncertainty that “[t]he legal translator is not the lawyer […] and must always resist the temptation to clarify or make a word more precise” (Xxx 2007b: 81), we have seen that clarification may be prompted by the TL and thus unavoidable.

Furthermore, some of the examples that we have seen above indicate

that there are various factors that create interlingual uncertainty from Chi- nese legal language. As we have seen, Chinese allows for the arrangement of its morphemes in different positions, with no graphical or otherwise al- teration. One character can be used in one word with one meaning, and in another word with another meaning; generally speaking, the meaning of a legal term is not the result of the sum of the meanings of the individual characters that make the word. While this may be true for many multi-word terms in various languages (see e.g. Xxxxxxx 1967, in Xxxxxxxx 2007), a hypothesis can be submitted that this is more frequent in the Chinese legal language. Thus, say, ‘to.entrust + person’ (wěituō rén) means mandator, but

(32) “Legal system” is a term commonly used in comparative law to refer to how the law is interpreted and enforced. Notwithstanding the specificities of each country, the two most widespread legal systems in the world are Civil Law and Common Law. In this ac- ceptation, “legal system” has the same meaning as “legal family” and “legal tradition”. Such is the acceptation of the term “legal system” as used by xx Xxxxx, cited next in the main text. Cf. e.g., xxxxx://xxx.xxx.xxxxxxx.xxx/xxx/xxxxx_xxxxxxx (Accessed July 24, 2021).

‘to.manage.on.behalf.of.somebody + to.entrust + person’ (dàilǐ wěituō rén) means mandatary. This is a source of ILU from Chinese legal language.

Additionally, and finally, Chinese legal terminology is younger than that of the Western legal traditions, given that its creation begun as recently as the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, when Western law start- ed to be imported to China. As Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx proposed many years ago, China does not have a specialised legal terminology (Xxxxxx 1970: 230), al- though a standardization process has been more recently observed (Qu 2015). Indeed, the recent adoption of the Civil Code in 2021 seems to go in this direction, merging (and, thus, abolishing) scattered laws on different matters into one single code, whereby less concept conflation is likely to happen. Yet, standardization does not necessarily imply specialization. Many terms used in legal documents are largely the same as those used in ordinary non-specialised Chinese, making use of the same characters and words, just combined togeth- er in a different fashion or context. There is no set of specialised characters for the Chinese legal language. This is opposite to what we can observe in several Western legal languages, whereby many legal words are remarkably so and where old-sounding words and phrasings or ancient languages, such as Latin, are used. The current Chinese legal system is very young and has no traces in traditional China. Additionally, traditional China was not focused on laying down and protecting the rights of Chinese citizens: experts in law had no right to represent their client in courts or legal proceedings (Chow 2015: 53), and there was virtually no traditional Chinese legal doctrine and legal rhetoric focussed on the study of the profound meaning of legal terms and their effect. For a long time, there has been no legal intralingual introspection, so to say. This tendency has changed, but due to some of the linguistic features of the Chinese language, it is hard to believe that interlinguistic indeterminacy will disappear any time soon when legal Chinese is translated into some Romance languages such as Italian.

As a result of the combination of the above phenomena, solving ILU

from the Chinese legal lexicon into a Western language such as Italian re- quires special skills, both legal and linguistic, that may not be readily availa- ble outside scholarship, and may be particularly complicated.

ricevuto: 1/3/2021 valutato: 5/5/2021

Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxx

ricevuto corretto: 19/7/2021 xxxxxxx.xxxxxxx@xxxxx.xx

approvato: 23/7/2021

ABBREVIATIONS

BGB: Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch [‘Civil Code’]. 1900. Available at xxxxx://xxx.xxxxxxx-xx- xxxxxxxx.xx/xxx/.

ChinLaC: Chinese language Law Corpus (created at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, University of Verona, Italy, under the Project of Excellence plan in “Digital Humanities Applied to Foreign Languages and Literature (2018- 2022)”; xxxxx://xx.xxxx.xxxxx.xx/xx/.)

GRN: Association Ricci & Descléè de Brouwer. 2001. Le Grand Ricci Numèrique: Dictionnaire Encyclopédique de la Langue Chinoise. Paris: Pleco add-on.

HTF: Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxxx Xx 中华人民共和国合同法 [‘Contract Law of the People’s Republic of China’]. 1999. Available at xxxx://xxx.xxx.xxx.xx/ wxzl/wxzl/2000-12/06/content_4732.htm.

ILU: Interlingual uncertainty.

MFTZ: Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx 中华人民共和国民法通则(2009修正) [‘Common Principles of the Civil Law of the People’s Republic of China (2009 Amendment)’]. 1987. Available at xxxx://xxx.xxx.xxx.xx/xxxx/xxxx/0000-00/00/ content_4470.htm.

MFZZ: Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx [‘General Principles of Civil Law of the People’s Republic of China’ aka ‘General Part of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China’]. 2017. Available at xxxx://xxx. xxxxxxxxxx.xxx/xxx/xxxxxx/0000/00/xx/000000.xxxxx.

PoA: Power of Attorney. SL: Source language.

TL: Target language.

REFERENCES

Xxxx, Xxxxxxx. 1994. Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation. New York: Xxxxxx.

Xxxxxxx Xxxx, Xxxxxxx. 0000. Isomorphism and Anisomorphism in the Translation of Legal Texts. In X. Xxxxx & X. Xxxx & X. Xxxxx (eds.), Translation Issues in Language and Law, 182-192. Hampshire: Springer.

Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxx. 2007. Indeterminacy, Context, Economy and Well-Formedness in Specialist Communication. In B.E. Antia (ed.), Indeterminacy in Terminology and LSP: Studies in Honour of Xxxxxxxx Xxxxx, 3-14. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Antia, Xxxxxx Xxxx. 2007. Indeterminacy in Terminology and LSP: Studies in Honour of Xxxxxxxx Xxxxx. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxxx X. 2011. A Construction Morphology Account of Derivation in Mandarin Chinese, Morphology 21: 89-130.

Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxxx X. & Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxx. 2018. ‘The Construction Morphology Analysis of Chinese Word Formation’. The Construction of Words, edited by Xxxxx Xxxxx, 4: 219-253. Studies in Morphology. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Xxxxxxxxxx, Xxxxx. 2015. On the Instrumental Value of Vagueness in the Law. Ethics

125/2: 425-448.

Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxx. 2006. Il mandato. Profili operativi, inadempienze e risarcimento danni [‘Mandate: Its practices, defaults, and forms of compensation for damages’]. Camerino: Halley Editrice.

Xxxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxxx & Xxxxx, Xxxxx & Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxx & Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxx & Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxx & Xxxxx, Xxxxxx X. & Xx Xxxxxx, Xxxxx, et alii. X. Xxxxxx (a cura di). 2010. Commentario al Codice Civile - artt. 1343 - 1469 bis [‘Commentary to the Civil Code - articles 1343 to 1469 bis’]. Milano: Xxxxxxx Editore.

Beijing Kaitai Law Firm 北京凯泰律师事务所. ‘Shòuquán Wěituōshū 授权委托书 [‘Power of Attorney’]’. xxxx://xxx.xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx/Xxxxx.xxxx?Xxx00000, accessed 1 April 2018.

BGB Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch [‘Civil Code’]. 1900. Available at xxxxx://xxx.xxxxxxx-xx- xxxxxxxx.xx/xxx/

Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxx. 2003. Aspetti della sostituzione negoziale nell’esperienza giuridica romana [‘Aspects of substitution in activities in Roman law’]. Rivista di Diritto Romano 3: 1-15.

Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxx. 2008. Dallo iussum domini alla contemplatio domini: contributo allo studio della storia della rappresentanza - corso di diritto romano [‘From iussum domini to contemplatio domini: a contribute to the study of the history of agency

- Roman history coursebook’]. Milano: Xxxxxxx Editore.

Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxxx & Xxxxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxx & Xxxxxxxx, X. Xxxxxx & Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxxx & Xxxxxx, Xxxxxxx & Xxx, X. Xxxxxxxx & Xxxxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxx & Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxx & Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxxx & Xxxx, Xxxxx. 2011. Diritto privato [‘Private law’]. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Torino: UTET Giuridica.

Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxx & Xxxxx-Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxx & XxXxxxx, Xxxx. 0000. LancsBox: Lancaster University Corpus Toolbox v. 5.1 [Software] (version 6.0). xxxx://xxxxxxx.xxxxx. xx.xx/xxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxx.xxx.

Xxx, Xxxxxxx. 2004. Chinese Law: A Language Perspective. Aldershot: Ashgate.

———. 2007a. Inter-lingual uncertainty in bilingual and multilingual law, Journal of Pragmatics 39: 69-83.

———. 2007b. Translating Law. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

———. 2018a. Chinese Language in Law - Code Red. Lanham: Lexington Books.

———. 2018b. Is the Chinese Legal Language More Ambiguous and Vague? In Chinese Language in Law - Code Red, 147-170. Lanham: Lexington Books.

———. 2018c. Linguistic and Cultural Meanings of ‘Rights’ in Chinese. In Chinese Language in Law - Code Red, 101-116. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxxx & Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxx. 2007. Compound Headedness in Chinese: An Analysis of Neologisms. Morphology 17: 207-231.

Xxxxx, Xxx-Xxxxx. 1999. The ‘well-Defined’ Is ‘Ambiguous’ - Indeterminacy in Chinese Conversation, Journal of Pragmatics 31: 535-556.

Xxxx, Xxxxx-Xx. 2011. Transplant of Civil Code in Japan, Taiwan, and China: With the Focus of Legal Evolution, National Taiwan University Law Review 6/1: 389-432.

Xxxxx Xxxxxxx xxx (ed.). 2000. ‘dàilǐ 代理’. In English-Chinese Chinese-English Two-Way Law Dictionary 96. Tāipěi 臺北: Jiànhóng Chūbǎnshè 建宏出版社.

Chinese Text Project (Zhōngguó Zhéxuéshū Diànzihuà Jìhuà 中国哲学书电子化计划). CTEXT. xxxx://xxxxx.xxx.

ChinLaC Chinese language Law Corpus (created at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, University of Verona, Italy, under the Project of Excellence plan in “Digital Humanities Applied to Foreign Languages and Literature (2018-2022)”; xxxxx://xx.xxxx.xxxxx.xx/xx/).

Xxxx, Xxxxxx. 2015. The Legal System of the People’s Republic of China in a Nutshell. 3rd ed. St. Xxxx, MN: West Academic.

Codice Civile [‘Civil Code’]. 1942. Available at xxxxx://xxx.xxxxxx xx.xx/xxxxxx-xxxxxx/.

Xxxxxxxxx, Xxxx. 2015. L’introduzione del diritto romano in Cina: evoluzione storica e recenti sviluppi relativi alla traduzione e produzione di testi e all’insegnamento [‘The introduction of Roman law to China: historical and recent development relating to the translation and production of texts and to teaching’], in Roma e America. Diritto Romano Comune 36: 175-2010. Modena: Mucchi Editore.

‘dàilǐ 代理’. In Xxxxxxx Dictionary. Xxxxxxx. xxxxx://xxx.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx/ dictionary/chinese-english/代理 Accessed 25 July 2018.

De Meto, Xxxxxxx. 1986. Lingue Tecniche del Latino [‘Latin special languages’]. Bologna: Patron Editore.

De-Mauri. 1940. Lessico giuridico latino e tradizione meditteranea [‘The lexicon of legal Latin and the Mediterranean tradition’], Annali della R. Scuola Normale Superiore Di Pisa. Lettere, Storia e Filosofia 9/1/2: 21-33.

Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxx A. O. 2000. Vagueness in Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fāng Xīnjū 方新军. n.a. Duì wǒguó Hétóng Fǎ dì 402, 403 tiáo de píngshuō: guānyú liǎng dà fǎxì dàilǐ lǐlùn chàyì de zài sīkǎo 对我国合同法第402、403条的评说——关于两大法系代理理论差异的再思考 [‘Comments on articles 402 and 403 of the Contract Law of the PRC: further differences on theories of agency in the two greatest legal systems’]. xxxx://xxxxxxxx.xx/xxxx-0.xxx. Accessed 7 November 2017.

Xxxxxx, Xxxxx X. & Xxxxxx-Xxxxxx, Xxxx (eds.). 2006. An Introduction to Language and Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

GRN Association Ricci & Descléè de Brouwer. 2001. Le Grand Ricci Numèrique: Dictionnaire Encyclopédique de la Langue Chinoise. Paris: Pleco add-on.

Xxxxx, Xxxxxx-Xxxx xx. 1987. La Traduction Juridique. The Point of View of a Comparative Lawyer, Les Cahiers de Droit 28/4: 793-812.

Xxxx, Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxx. 2012. The Concept of Law. In P. A. Xxxxxxx & X. Xxxxxx. 3rd ed. Croydon: Oxford University Press.

Xxxxxxxxxx, Xxx & Xxxxxxx X. Xxxxxx. 1987. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments. In G. Z. Noerr (ed.). Translated by Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxx. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Xxxxx Xxxxxx (黄高才) & Xxx Xxxxxx (刘会芹) 2011. Shòuquán wěituōshū de xiězuò yàodiǎn 授权委托书的写作要点 [‘Essential points in writing a power of attorney’], Xxxxx Xxx Xxx 秘书之友 7: 24-26.

Xxxxxxxx-Xxxxx, Xxxxx Xxxxxx. 2017. Monsters of the Absolute Inoue Enryo, the Task of Buddhist philosophy, and the Haunted Borderlands of Post-Kantian Thought, International Inoue Enryo Research 5: 1-21.

HTF Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxxx Xx 中华人民共和国合同法 [‘Contract Law of the People’s Republic of China’]. 1999. Available at xxxx://xxx.xxx.xxx.xx/ wxzl/wxzl/2000-12/06/content_4732.htm.

Xxxxx, Xxxxxxxxx. 1891. ‘Macht’. In Xxxxxxx, Xxxxx (ed.). An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language (Etymologisches Xxxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxx, 0.Xxxxxxx), translated by Xxxx Xxxxxxx Xxxxx. London: Xxxxxx Bells & sons. New York: MacMillan & Co. Available at xxxxx://xxxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx/xxx/xx?xxxxxx.00000000000000.

Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxx. 2010. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

Xxxxxx, Xxxxxx & Xxxxxxx, Xxxx. 2003 [1980]. Metaphors We Live By. 2nd ed. Chicago/ London: University of Chicago Press.

Xxx, Xxx-xxxxx. 2003. ‘Lǐ [理]: Principle, Pattern, Reason’. In Xxx, Xxxxxxx X. (ed.),

Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy, 364-370. New York: Routledge.

Xxxxxx, Xxxxxxx B. 1970. Methodological Problems in Studying Chinese Communist Civil Law. In Xxxxx, Xxxxxx Xxxx (ed.), Contemporary Chinese Law: Research Problems and Perspectives, 230-260. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Xxxx-Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxx & Xxxx, Xxxx. 2002. The Risk of Mixed Laws: The Example of Indirect Agency under Chinese Contract Law, Columbia Journal of Asian Law 15: 173-345.

Xxxxx, Xxxxxxxxxx. 2020. L’ambiguità delle Lingue [‘The ambiguity of languages’]. Roma: Xxxxxxx.

Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxxx. 2015. Fondamenti di Linguistica Forense Cinese. Traduzione Giuridica e Semiotica [‘Introduction to Chinese Forensic Linguistics. Legal and Semiotic Translation’]. Pisa: Il Campano.

———. 2018. Xxxx Xxxxxx: More than a Problem of Translation. Linguistic Evidence of Lawfully Limited Rights in China, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law

- Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique 32/1: 29-46.

Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxxx. 2021. On the Forms and Thorns of Linguistic Indeterminacy in Chinese Law, Comparative Legilinguistics 45: 61-92.

Xxxxxx, Xxxxxx. 2014. Varieties of Vagueness in the Law. In Id., The Language of Law, 85-105. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Xxxxxx, Xxxxxxxx. 1993. The Formation of Modern Chinese Lexicon and Its Evolution Toward a National Language: The Period from 1840 to 1898, Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series, 6: i-295.

Mencius [Xxxx Xx xx]. 2011. Mencius. P. J. Ivanhoe (ed.). Translated by Xxxxx Xxxxx.

Translations from the Asian Classics. New York: Columbia University Press.

MFTZ Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó Mínfǎ Tōngzé 中华人民共和国民法通则(2009修正) [‘Common Principles of the Civil Law of the People’s Republic of China (2009 Amendment)’]. 1987. Available at xxxx://xxx.xxx.xxx.xx/xxxx/xxxx/0000-00/00/ content_4470.htm.

MFZZ Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx [‘General Principles of Civil Law of the People’s Republic of China’ aka ‘General Part of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China’]. 2017. Available at xxxx://xxx. xxxxxxxxxx.xxx/xxx/xxxxxx/0000/00/xx/000000.xxxxx.

Xxxxxx-Xxxxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxx. 2019. ‘Agency’. In Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. xxxxx://xxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx/xxxxx/xxxxxx-xxx.

Xxxxxx, Xxxxxxxx. 2010. Agency: Law and Principles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Xxxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxxx. 1965. Studi sulla rappresentanza [‘Studies on agency’]. Milano: Xxxxxxx. Xx, Xxxxxxxx. 2015a. Compilations of Law Dictionaries in New China and Their Roles on Standardization of Translated Legal Terms, International Journal for the

Semiotics of Law - Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique 28/3: 449-467.

———. 0000x. Xxxxxxxxxxxx xx Xxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx xx Xxx Xxxxx and Their Roles on Standardization of Translated Legal Terms, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique 28/3: 449-467.

Xxxxx, Xxxx. 1965. Selected Chronology of Recent Japanese Philosophy (1868-1963),

Philosophy East and West 15/3/4: 259-284.

Xxxxxx, Xxxxxxxx. 0000. Indeterminacy in Technical Translation. In B. E. Antia (ed.), Lexical Chains in Technical Translation. A Case Study in Indetermincy, 15-35. Am- sterdam/Philadelphia: Xxxxxxxxx.

Xxxxxx, Xxxx X. 2012. Traditional Chinese Philosphy and the Paradigm of Structure (Li

理). Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Xxxx, Xxxxxxx & Xxxxxx Xxxx. 1997. Language and Law: Sources of Systemic Vagueness and Ambiguous Authority in Chinese Statutory Language, University of British Columbia Law Review, 31: 205-254.

Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxxxx. 1997. La rappresentanza volontaria [‘Voluntary agency’]. Padova: CEDAM.

Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxx & Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxx. 2020. Grammatica della Lingua Cinese Classica [‘Grammar of Classical Chinese’]. Milano: Hoepli.

Xxxxxx, Xxxxxxx. 2002. Ambiguity and Misunderstanding in the Law, Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx Law Review 25/1: 167-193.

Xxx, Xxxxxx. 2021. Loanwords in the Chinese Language. Oxon: Routledge.

Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxx & Xxxxxxxxxx, Xxxx (a cura di). 1994. Atti del Convegno Internazionale il Latino del Diritto (Perugia 8-10 Ottobre 1992) [‘Proceedings of the international conference: “Legal Latin”, held in Perugia, Italy, on October 8-10, 1992’]. Roma: University of Rome.

Xxxxxxxxx, Xxxx X. 2007. Void for Vagueness (at Law), The Xxxxxxxx Center Report 37/1: 10-11.

Xxxx Xxxxxxxx 水晶晶. 2017. Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxx Wěituōshū 正确认识授权委托书 [‘Understanding a power of attorney correctly’]. xxxxx://xx.xxxxxx.xx.xxx/ s/5BRSrSP8ql-BvsZj678ZZw.

Xxxx, Xxxxx X. 2008. Fighting over Words: Language and Civil Law Cases. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

———. 2017. Deceptive Ambiguity by Police and Prosecutors. Oxford Studies in Language and Law. New York: Oxford University Press.

Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxx. 2007. Vague Legal Concepts: A Contradictio in Adjecto?. In B. E. Antia (ed.), Indeterminacy in Terminology and LSP: Studies in Honour of Xxxxxxxx Xxxxx, 119-134. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

‘The Shanghai Lawyers Webpage - Sample of Power of Attorney (上海律师网-诉讼代理人授权委托书模板)’. Accessed 13 February 2018. xxxx://xxx.xxxxxxxxxxx. org/weituo.html.

Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxx. 2009. Pitfalls of English as a Contract Language. In X. Xxxxx & X. Xxxx &

X. Xxxxx (eds.), Translation Issues in Language and Law, 147-181. Hampshire: Springer.

Xxxxxxxxx, Xxxxxx. 2011. Istituzioni di diritto privato [‘Institutions of Private Law’]. Xxxxxxx Editore.

Trombetta-Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxxx. 2003. Rappresentanza Volontaria e Diritto Internazionale Privato [‘Voluntary agency and Private International Law’]. Padova: CEDAM.

Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxx. 2005. Il Latino Giuridico [‘Legal Latin’]. Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane.

Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxx. 2011. Vagueness and the Guidance of Action. In X. Xxxxxx & X. Xxxxxx (eds.), Philosophical Foundations of Language in the Law, 58-582. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wáng, Jiāfú 王家福. 1987. Mínfǎ Jīběn Zhīshi 民法基本知识 [‘Fundamentals of Civil Law’]. Xxxxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx.

Xxxx, Xxxxxx xxx (ed.). 2000. Mínfǎ 民法 [‘Civil Law’]. Běijīng 北京: Zhōngguó Rénmín Dàxué Chūbǎnshè 中国人民大学出版社.

Xxxx, Xxxxxxx & Xxxxxxxx Xxx & Xxxxxxx Xxxx. 2020. History of Chinese Philosophy through Its Key Terms. Translated by Xxxxxxx Xxxxx. Singapore: Springer - Nanjing University Press.

Winter, Bodo. 2019. Sensory Linguistics: Language, Perception and Metaphor. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: Xxxxxxxxx.

Xxxx, Xxx-Xxx & Xx, Xxxxxx & Xx, Xxxxxxx. 0000. Introduction to Chinese Natural Language Processing. Morgan & Xxxxxxxx Publishers.

Xxx Xxxxxxx 夏登峻. 2012. Yīng-Hàn Fǎlǜ Cídiǎn 英汉法律词典 English-Chinese Dictionary of Law. 4th ed. Běijīng 北京: Fǎlǜ Chūbǎnshè 法律出版社.

Xǔ Shèn (許慎). 121AD. Xxxx Xxx Xxx Xx (說文解字) [‘Explaining graphs and analyzing characters’]. Available at xxxxx://xxxxx.xxx/xxxx-xxx-xxx-xx.

Xxx Xx xx (ed.). 2001. ‘dàilǐ 代理’. In Fǎlǜ Hàn-Yīng Cídiǎn 法律漢英辭典 [‘Chinese-English law dictionary’], 123. Táipěi 臺北: Wǔnán Xxxxx Xxxxxx Xxxxxx xxxxxxxx.

Xxxx Xxxx xx. 2018. Qīng mò xīfāng fǎxué gàiniàn de chuánbō yǔ yǎnzhǐ fúhào de xíngchéng: yǐ “Wànguó Gōngfǎ” zhōng de ‘right’ wèi kǎochá duìxiàng 清末西方法学概念的传播与衍指符号的形成——以《万国公法》中的“Right”为考察对象 [‘On the diffusion of Western legal notions during the late Xxxx and the formation of a super-sign: investigating the word ‘right’ in the Chinese translation of «Elements of International Law»’]. In Qū Wénshēng 屈文生(ed.), Fǎlǜ Fānyì Yánjiū 法律翻译研究 Legal Translation Studies, 120-174. Shànghǎi 上海: Shànghǎi Rénmín Chūbǎnshè 上海人民出版社.

Xx, Xxxxxxx xxx & Xxx, Xxx xx (eds.). 1998a. ‘dàilǐ 代理’. In Xīn Hàn-Yīng Fǎxué Cídiǎn 新汉英法学词典 (A New Chinese-English Legal Dictionary), 125. Běijīng 北京: Fǎlǜ Chūbǎnshè 法律出版社.

——— (eds.). 1998b. ‘wěituō 委托’. In Xīn Hàn-Yīng Fǎxué Cídiǎn 新汉英法学词典 (A New Chinese-English Legal Dictionary), 821. Běijīng 北京: Fǎlǜ Chūbǎnshè 法律出版社.

Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó Hétóng Fǎ Shìyì 中华人民共和国合同法释义 [‘Interpretation of the Contract Law of the People’s Republic of China’]. 1999. Available at xxxx://xxx.xxx.xxx.xx/xxx/xxxxxxx/xxxxxxxx/xxxx_0000.xxx.

Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxxx Xx 中华人民共和国信托法 [‘Trust Law of the People’s Republic of China’]. 2001. Available at xxxx://xxx.xxx.xxx.xx/xxxx/ wxzl/2001-05/30/content_136770.htm.

Document Metadata

Table of Contents

VAGUENESS IN LEGAL LANGUAGE:

Document Metadata