A Corpus-based Study On The English-Chinese Translation Of Adjuncts In Business Contracts

To ensure the normal development of business activities in international and economic trade, it is necessary to sign business contract between contracting parties. Under this situation, study on translation of business contract is also more important and necessary. At present, the main job of the translation of business contract in China is the work of English to Chinese. English business contract demonstrates features including the strict words, accurate expression or statement so as to avoid the misinterpretation of clauses or contents in the contract. Preciseness is the most obvious characteristic and quality of English business contract. Many scholars have studied the translation of business contract from different perspectives and also present the practical strategies, principles or methods about translation. However, the author finds that studies on adjunct in business contract are less, non-systematic, disperse and without guiding theories by reading researches or papers. Adjunct, with large number in English business contract, is asked to be used precisely and strictly in case of negative effects in performance of contract. A sentence or clause contains lots of adjuncts which are complicated and lengthy to stipulate parties’rights, benefits or responsibilities.This present thesis based on corpus is a systematic study of the translation of adjuncts in international business contracts, which aims to achieve a better understanding of adjunct translation and business contract. The thesis first describes the general theories of Halliday’s Functional Grammar including the definition and backgrounds of development. Then, it introduces the categories of adjuncts and does the translation researches with examples. Domestication and Foreignization, opposite but complementary to each, are introduces roughly. Secondly, the thesis introduces the self-built corpus including adjuncts sources and the format of corpus. The foundation of corpus supplies the objective facts and statistical figures, and makes preparation for the translation practices. Armed with the theory of Domestication and Foreignization, the thesis presents translation methods at lexical and syntactical levels. Then, for the most important part of the thesis-the specific analysis of the translation of adjuncts in international business contracts, the author discusses from five categories with the support of examples and corpus.As a necessary component in international business, the contracts play a very important role. This thesis is a corpus-based study on the E-C translation of adjuncts in business contracts from the perspective of Domestication and Foreignization to probe into the translation strategies or techniques in the hope of providing a general guide for E-C translation of adjuncts in business contracts both theoretically and practically.