E-C Translation Of International Business Contracts From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

With its opening up to the outside world and entry into WTO, China has played an ever-increasingly important role in international transactions. Business communications from different countries are substantially increasing, which stimulates the demand for the translation of international business contracts (shortened as IBC hereinafter). IBC is an agreement between juridical persons from different countries or districts on the establishment, alteration and extermination of certain legal relationship for certain economic goal. As a result, the translation of IBC has aroused the intensive interest of translators and scholars both at home and abroad, they have done many researches from various angles, anyway, the translation of IBC still calls for an effective theory to guide the translators. Thus, there is still a long way to go in the study of this field, and any exploration with these wishes is welcome.It is under such conditions that the author of this thesis tries to make an exploration of theoretic basis from the perspective of Skopos theory and seek for practical measures for E-C translation of IBC.The Skopos theory holds that the end justified the means. In Skopos theory, there are multiple translation standards and flexibility in choosing translation strategies because the Skopos rule is the top-ranking rule in Skopos theory by which the translators have more freedom to choose the most appropriate strategy according to translation brief. In addition, the reason why Skopos theory is regarded as a great breakthrough in the traditional idea of translation which provides a new perspective of top-down method different from the traditional down-top one. It holds that the translators get started from the macro-level analysis of translation purpose and text type to the micro-level practice at lexical, syntactic and textual level.The thesis is composed of three chapters besides the introduction and the conclusion. In the introduction part, the author puts forward directly the motivation and significance of this thesis. Then, the feasibility of E-C translation of IBC guided by Skopos theory is discussed to pave the way for the following exploration. The first chapter is an overall introduction of IBC. And what's more, the stylistic features comparison between English and Chinese business contracts and the summarization of the problems in E-C translation of IBC in China are made to pave the way for the translators to smoothly carry on E-C translation of IBC in a professional way. The second chapter is a general review of Skopos theory from its background to its development, including three rules and criteria of Skopos theory. Lastly, after a relatively thorough study on Skopos theory, the author gets enlightenment on E-C translation of IBC. The third chapter is the most important part of this thesis, covering the translation principles and strategies for E-C translation of IBC. The author tries to find a proper and effective translation strategy to guide such translation through the theoretic analysis within Skopos theory. At the end of this part, the author tries to call for the attention to a special phenomenon that there is still the use of fuzziness in IBC with some pragmatic purposes. After a primary study on it, the strategies and techniques for E-C translation of fuzziness in IBC will be discussed. It is the author's wish to improve the E-C translation of IBC in a round. The part of conclusion summarizes the whole thesis including major findings and the limitations. And what's more, the suggestions are made for further study in this field.Seen through a relatively thorough study of the thesis, it proved that Skopos theory is an effective one to guide E-C translation of international business contracts.