earticle

영어

This study explores the issues of using present indicative in place of shall in the English translation of Korean statutes. Due to the Plain Language legislative attempt over the past few decades, shall is now rapidly being replaced by the simple present and other performative forms in many common law countries. Against this backdrop, this study compiled three sub-comparable corpora consisting of translated Korean Statute Corpus (TKSC) and non-translated British Statute Corpus (BSC) and American Statute Corpus (ASC), and examined the frequencies, types, and patterns of present indicative in each corpus. In particular, the present study separately calculated the frequencies of present indicative forms that convey prescriptive force using CLAWS 7 tagged text files. Analysis of the three comparable corpora shows many discrepancies in the use of present indicative between translated corpus and non-translated corpora. While the simple present is restrictively used in definition provisions in TKSC, many present simple verb forms are found in ASC and BSC as a performative marker to indicate constitutive rules, application provisions, deeming provisions, and other declaratives.