The effects of directionality on lexical complexity in Chinese legal translation

Abstract This study investigates how translation directionality affects the lexical complexity in Chinese-English legal translation. To examine this complexity, the research adopts a multidimensional data-driven framework, comparing direct (into L1) and inverse (into L2) translation corpora through 59 fine-grained lexical indices extracted via TAALES. The analysis reveals a significant lexical divergence between the two directions. Direct translations tend to exhibit higher polysemy and lexical variation, often preserving the semantic vagueness of the source text, while inverse translations prioritize semantic specificity, conceptual explicitation, and terminological consistency. These direction-induced divergences do not merely reflect differences in linguistic proficiency; rather, they stem from a complex interplay of cognitive risk management and sociological constraints. Inverse translators adopt risk-averse cognitive preference, utilizing standardized, monosemic equivalents to mitigate cross-linguistic ambiguity and ensure legal precision. Ultimately, such preference show that directionality affects the bilingual mechanisms and linguistic configurations of translated texts, highlighting the value of integrating corpus-based methods with cognitive and sociological perspectives in legal translation studies.