A Report On The Translation Of The Bids For Installation And Construction Of Hunan Thermal Power Construction Company—Under The Guidance Of Skopostheorie

With the constantly progressing integration of global economy and trade as well as China’s opening wider and broader to the outside world, more and more Chinese enterprises are taking an active part in international competition. As a new type of international trade, bidding and bid activities have been gradually familiar to us, and now they are widely adopted and promoted. According to international practice, for the procurement of goods, works and services subject to bidding, all the documents related to the bidding and purchasing activity, including the bidding documents and bids,business contracts, shall be compiled in English. Even if another language is allowed for these documents, they should be accompanied by an English translation for future reference. And in the event of ambiguity or disputes during the interpretation of the documents, the English version shall prevail. Therefore, great importance must be attached to the comprehension and translation of bidding documents and bids as well as other related documents, which have served as the basis for competitive bidding throughout the whole bidding process.Skopostheorie, dating from the 1970 s, defines translation as a purposeful action and believes that the purpose determines the adopted principles, strategies and methods.It is a translation theory that applies to practical texts. The bids belong to practical texts and have basic language features of legal texts, such as precise words, strict structure,professional terms, careful thinking, formal style, clear meaning, etc. Therefore, in the light of Skopostheorie, this report firstly discusses the language characteristics of these documents at the lexical and syntactical level, and then puts forward some translation principles, and applicable translation techniques and methods, so as to provide some references for the translation of the bids.This report is a Chinese-English translation report. The translation text excerpts from Chapter I to Chapter IV of the Bids for Installation and Construction of Hunan Thermal Power Construction Company. The translation task regards Skopostheorie as theoretical guidance. This report consists of six parts including an introduction and aconclusion. The introduction briefly presents the importance of the translation of bidding documents and bids, the research status as well as the applicability of Skopostheorie to the translation of the bids. Chapter I is the task description, which briefly outlines the background of the task, reasons for choosing this text as well as the text contents and text features. Chapter II, the process description, includes the preparation before translation, feasibility of the task and time arrangement for the task.An overview of Skopostheorie is arranged in Chapter III, including its formation and development and the three rules, which are skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule.Chapter IV is devoted to the case analysis, which explores the three principles guiding the translation task under the guidance of Skopostheorie and analyzes the guiding process of the Skopostheorie to the translation task both at the lexical level and syntactical level, including the choice of words, the disposal of sentences and the logic thinking of translation, so as to propose some principles and some applicable techniques and methods for the translation of the bids. The conclusion summarizes the translation experience of the text under the guidance of Skopostheorie, and points out the weakness of this report and the direction of future study.