Latin Terms in Hong Kong Legal Language

This book utilizes a sizable bilingual legal judgement database to provide a useful reference on the use of Latin terms and their Chinese equivalents in Hong Kong, not only for those in the legal profession but also for any others interested in the language situation of Hong Kong.

Words of Latin or Romance language origin constitute a special and important feature of English legal language. In spite of their introduction into the English language mostly in the distant past, they are still commonly used in modern English, especially in the legal domain, and basically with the preservation of their original meanings. Therefore, these terms (with the majority from Latin) stand out as a special lexical layer which for a long time has served to characterize in English the genre of legal writing, as in the case with medicine.

The use of words derived from a different language variety such as the incorporation of Latin in English is not unique to English, or other languages in Europe. There is also a similar tradition of diglossia among languages of East Asia such as Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Modern Chinese. For them the Classical Chinese language has provided such a lexical stratum, following the incorporation of the study of the Chinese Classics in the education of the elite, and the use of the logographic writing system in the development of indigenous literary traditions within what is known as Sinosphere or logographic circle in East Asia.


A useful example may be provided by “appendectomy” in Japanese, Vietnamese and Chinese .
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Another example is “subdural hematoma”, the term referring to “blood clot under the skull”,
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The English term draws from Latin “sub” and “dura”, and from Greek “hematoma”, while the Sino-Japanese term refers to “blood swelling under the (hard) skull/brain membrane”. There are clearly parallel word constituents in Japanese and Vietnamese based on Chinese .

In the case of Latin terms found in English, the meaning and information encoded in the legal terms are very highly compact and succinct, so the terms cannot be rendered into English with just single words or appropriate periphrastic expressions. Therefore, what may appear to be jargonistic terms constitute a major vocational challenge which legal professionals have to overcome . Moreover, some items such as forum, ex-officio, alibi, pro rata, vis-a-vis have been incorporated into the basic formal English vocabulary . Given the unassailable and dominant status of English in Hong Kong in the past 150 years, many such Latin terms have been in use for a long time in legal documents. Against this background, the present book intends to provide readers with a useful account of the authentic usage of 105 such Latin terms which are commonly used in the Hong Kong legal domain.