The legal standing of the serial comma
[This is a guest post by Mark Cohen]
I am wondering if members of this group have had experience with translating the Chinese serial comma or dùnhào 顿号 [、] ("the caesura sign; a slight-pause mark used to set off items in a series; punctuation mark used between parallel words or short phrases; sign of coordination; ideographic comma; the Chinese comma (、) used for separating items in a list") In 2007, I was involved in a WTO case where I negotiated an English translation for a dunhao that ended up appearing as a footnote in the panel decision regarding a criminal law. The statutory language was "fùzhì , fāxíng 复制 、 发行" of copyrighted works. The question at that time was whether China required "making" or "selling" [in the English text] of a copyrighted work or whether both acts were required under the criminal law. See World Trade Organization, China-Measures Affecting the Protection and Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights, Report of the Panel, WT/DS/362/5 (26 Jan. 2009) , at fn. 82 and accompanying text: “There is neither "and" or "or" between "making" and "selling", only a Chinese repetitive comma (、) or dùnhào 顿号 (lit., "pause" + "mark; symbol"), which has no precise English equivalent.” The panel translated the “serial comma” with a slash “/” which basically preserved this ambiguity.
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