Wording Tactics Of Chinese-English Translation Of International Business Contracts

This thesis is an exploration of some specific wording tactics of Chinese-English translation of international business contracts (IBC) on the basis of a macro-analysis of general stylistic and linguistic features of IBC shared by both Chinese and English versions. An IBC is a legal document with a frozen style and an expressive function. Wording in IBC has a strong tendency to be precise, wordy, conservative, dull, straightforward, pithy and multidisciplinary. Precision in meaning and reproduction of a contract style, or in other words, semantic equivalence and stylistic equivalence, constitute the soul of criteria for the translation of IBC. Some effective translation tactics may be employed to achieve accuracy in wording and avoidance of ambiguity as well as reproduction of a contract style. These translation tactics include tactics of translating various moods such as obligations, permissions and possibilities in IBC. The author also proposes some lexical devices in IBC translation, namely use of literary words or legal parlance, archaisms, formulaic expressions, technical words, parallel synonyms, repetition of identical words, restriction on the use of pronouns and definite articles and proper use of capitalization. These translation tactics are also based on a contrastive study of similarities and differences in IBC wording between Chinese and English.