Abstract
As a former British colony, Hong Kong has adopted the common law system for more than 150 years and English was the sole language of the law in Hong Kong before the 1970s. To acknowledge the language rights of the majority of the city’s population whose mother tongue is Chinese, the Judiciary Administration of Hong Kong introduced Chinese as a trial language in the magistracies 40 years ago. Chinese, however, is still struggling to secure its place as a courtroom language. Judges often resort to English in Chinese courtrooms. There are a number of reasons for the phenomenon: (a) the Judiciary Administration does not have a rigid policy of ‘using Chinese only in a Chinese courtroom’; (b) magistrates seem to be more at ease using English than Chinese; (c) magistrates are under the influence of the counsel who also prefer using English rather than Chinese; and (d) pre-service and in-service education on using Chinese as a trial language for judges and counsel is inadequate, and lawyer training universities place little emphasis on Chinese oral skills in their curricula. This article is a pioneering attempt to investigate the last reason. It illustrates and analyzes the issue with a court case, interviews with judges, lawyers, a law teacher and law students, as well as an examination of law school curricula, and suggests means to promote Chinese as a trial language in Hong Kong. Although the sampling size of the research is small, the findings provide a glimpse into an important field which has hitherto attracted little attention.
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