On Strategies For Translating International Business English Contracts Into Chinese-From The Perspective Of Functionalism

In allusion to the unsatisfactory translation of international business contracts nowadays, this paper breaks through the traditional study method of contract translation which merely focuses on the language features of contract and does contract translation research within the framework of functionalism. By adopting the top-down approach advocated by Christian Nord at first, the author intends to find out translation strategies which are able to realize the translation skopos and text functions of contract at the macro level. Then the author makes a complementary study of contract translation strategies in the bottom-up process in accordance with the linguistic features of contract at the micro level to make the translation version precise and accurate.The paper is composed of five chapters.Chapter one is to introduce the current situation of the E-C international business contract translation (which means to translate international business English contracts into Chinese), analyzing the causes of the unsatisfactory contract translation and emphasizing the necessity of the present study.Chapter two sets forth the definitions and classification of contract and then illustrates the linguistic features of international business English contracts with the belief that to fully understand a contract is the first and foremost step to do contract translation.Chapter three is the literature review of the development of functionalism, the representative scholars of functionalism and their contributions to the translation theory. The author further analyzes the theoretical feasibility of applying functionalism to the E-C international business contract translation.Chapter four is the study on the practical strategies for the E-C international business contract translation within the framework of functionalism. Since to realize the communicative skopos of the TT is the starting point of selecting strategies according to functionalism, different translation strategies should be adopted with a view to different factors. If the retained structure of the English contract is incompatible with that of the target language and unacceptable to the target text receivers, we should adopt flexible translation strategies such as shift, conversion, omission, amplification, etc. As for translation of the modal verb"shall", omission, combination or formula translation strategies are chosen depending on its meaning in different situations. For archaism translation, formula translation is the most applicable strategy. Lengthy sentence translation usually prefers division and combination strategies. Omission or amplification is adopted respectively after classifying two kinds of parallel usage of synonyms.Chapter five is the conclusion of the thesis. In this part, the author states the summary, points out the limitation of the present study and tries to provide some constructive suggestions for the future study in the relative field.