A Report On English-chinese Translation Of Subcontracts For Mechanical Installation Works

In recent years,with the increasing number of international projects,project contracts in international projects become more and more significant as a necessary part of project management.Therefore,the report used two English subcontracts for mechanical installation works as the source text,and studied the process of English-Chinese translation of the contracts.This report based on the English subcontracts for mechanical installation works.Firstly,the source text is analyzed from two aspects in the report: text types and linguistic features.According to the analysis of Newmark’s text typology,as a legal text,English contract primarily conveys information.So it can be classified as information-based text.At the same time,contracts express the will of both parties and have the function of expression.Moreover,contracts call on both parties to fulfill their obligations and bear their own responsibilities on time to a certain extent,so contracts have the function of vocative text.In terms of linguistic features,the source text is analyzed from the aspects of vocabulary,syntax and discourse features.As for lexical level,the wide use of words with meanings,terms and the modal verb“shall” is the most distinctive feature in English construction contract.For syntactic level,declarative sentence was widely used in English contract,including long complex sentences and passive sentences.About discourse,the layout and logicality among items be analyzed.In view of the above text types and linguistic features,the source text is translated by combining semantic translation and communicative translation.In the meanwhile,in accordance with linguistic features of the source text,the author chose typical case from the view of lexical,syntactic translation and cohesion and coherence of discourse,to analyze the application of two translation methods—semantic translation and communicative translation and several translation techniques such as amplification,omission and division in translating construction contract.It is concluded that in the process of English-Chinese translation of project contracts,only using semantic translation would make the translation hard to understand,but the translation is faithful to the source text;while thetranslation under communicative translation is more smooth and easy for readers to accept,but the faithfulness of the translation to the source text is deficient;therefore,the translation methods of semantic translation and communicative translation are indispensable.Finally,this report summarizes the main benefits from this translation task and points for improvement.