On Flexibility In E-C Translation Of International Business Contracts

This dissertation makes extensive exploration and discussion of the translative flexibility of translating business contracts from English into Chinese. The whole thesis consists of five chapters besides the introduction, the content, and bibliography. Chapter One has taken some quotations which are concerned with the flexibility written by the previous translators. What is translative flexibility? Why is it essential to translation? How is it reflected? Jin Di said that flexibility is neither indiscriminate copy, nor formulaic equivalence between two languages, nor rigid formulas. It is adaptability that has to be sought in order to achieve accuracy. The author considers that flexibility roots in philosophy, linguistics and the limited application of machine translation. Especially, the great discrepancies in English and Chinese cause flexibility to be inevitable in the course of translation. The author proposes that flexibility should diversify the application of translation theories to different translation practice as there should be no unchanged universal solution to each sentence, paragraph or text in translating the source language (SL) into the target language (TL). The best solution should select the most tactful translating approach based on the specific analysis of the inter-relations of language units without affecting the original meaning of the source language.In Chapter Two, the definition of business contracts is provided, and then the discussion on their stylistics is provided because the author thinks it a must to master the characteristics of such texts as long as translators desire to be successful. The next three chapters, including Chapters Three, Four and Five are the principal part of this dissertation.Newmark's theory is introduced in the third chapter, where person, methods and translation unit are discussed in detail. A conclusion has been drawn through analysis by the author that on one hand, most of his exposition is effective in translating contracts, such as the parts on person and methods; on the other hand, the relevant translation unit he suggested is inapplicable at all to contract translation from English into Chinese. And the author argues that sentence is the unit, instead of paragraph or...