The Application of Passive Voice in Legal English: A Case Study of the Labor Contract Law

Abstract

Passive voice stands as one of the most fundamental and distinctive characteristics of legal English, serving to enhance objectivity, formality, and impersonal authority. This paper, grounded in an analysis of the intrinsic differences between Chinese and English linguistic structures and legal discourse conventions, conducts a comparative examination of the deployment of passive voice across four authoritative English translations of China’s Labor Contract Law. Results reveal that different functions of passive voice, the subjectivity of translators taken into consideration, lead to the differences in the four translated versions.