Translation Of Bidding Documents And Bids: -A Functionalist Approach

With the continuous advance of global economic and trade integration, more and more Chinese enterprises begin to participate in international commercial competition. As a new type of international trading, bidding and bid activities are gradually familiar to our Chinese people. Due to its advantages of open competition, international bidding and bid activities have become one major type of international trading for goods, works or services. For the procurement of many large-scale and medium-sized projects and materials, in particular, those projects using loans from foreign governments or international financial organizations, it is generally provided that international competitive bidding (ICB) should be adopted for the purpose of ensuring valid and legitimate usage of loans. It is also international practices that bidding documents and bids should be prepared in English for the procurement of goods, works and services subject to bidding. Even if another language is allowed for these documents, they should be accompanied by an English translation for future reference. Should any discrepancy occur during the interpretation of the documents, the English version prevails. As a result, sufficient attention must be paid to the comprehension and translation of bidding documents and bids, which lay a fundamental basis for competitive bidding throughout the whole bidding process.In essence, bidding documents and bids are one kind of commercial contracts classified as frozen-style legal language. They are legally binding on concerned tenderees and bidders. Traditionally, most of legal translation studies are based on linguistics and stress the"equivalence"between ST and TT. Legal translation is simply regarded as one kind of transcoding centered on ST. However, in accordance with German functionalist translation theory, this thesis takes a top-down approach, centers on TT and substitutes static"equivalence"with dynamic"adequacy". Therefore, the translation purpose of bidding documents and bids has been stressed and two major expected TT functions (i.e. informative function and appellative function) in target cultural-oriented situations have been highlighted.This thesis applies functionalist dominant Skopostheorie to analyze the translation brief of bidding documents and bids, including translation initiator, sender and text producer, translator, receiver, time, place and medium of text reception as well as the intended text functions. Then translator may understand and infer seemingly abstract translation Skopos from the specific translation brief. Since explicit translation Skopos is the dominant rule deciding all translation actions, it helps translator act as expert in the translation action and initiatively set down concrete translation strategies to smoothly carry out his translation assignment. In order to better serve translation Skopos, translator should take the three rules of Skopostheorie (i.e. Skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule) as criteria to integrate macro-level expected text functions, text format, term consistency with micro-level syntactical structure and lexical features during his translation of bidding documents and bids.Based on the C-E translation study of bidding documents and bids with functionalist translation theory, this thesis has broaden the application scope of functionalist theory itself, analyzed translation Skopos and TT functions, and proved the rationality and feasibility of German functionalist translation theory as general theory in guiding the translation of bidding documents and bids as special purpose texts.This thesis consists of six chapters:Chapter 1 introduces research background, rationale of the study, research questions, and structure, data sources and methodology of the thesis.Chapter 2 describes the essence and advantages of bidding and bid activities, classification and basic procedures of bidding, and macro-level composition of bidding documents and bids; reviews the previous studies on legal translation; introduces the gradual development of German functionalist translation theory.Chapter 3 establishes the theoretical framework of this thesis based on the detailed introduction of functionalist key concepts. That is, translator can understand and infer seemingly abstract translation Skopos from its translation brief. Since explicit translation Skopos is the dominant rule deciding all translation actions, it helps translator act as expert in the translation action and set down concrete translation strategies to smoothly carry out his translation assignment.Chapter 4 presents an in-depth analysis of bidding documents and bids translation in terms of translation brief including translation initiator, sender and text producer, translator, receiver, time, place and medium of text reception as well as the intended text functions, with a view to determining translation Skopos of bidding documents and bids.Chapter 5 provides typical C-E translation practice of bidding documents and bids,takes Skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule as criteria, and studies TT translation strategies by a top-down approach based on intended text functions and Skopos in such aspects as text format, term consistency, active voice vs. passive voice, verbalization vs. nominalization, modal verbs between"shall"and"will", formal words and phrase, and archaism.Chapter 6 concludes that German functionalist translation theory as general theory proves its rationality and applicability in guiding the translation of bidding documents and bids as special purpose texts. Its top-down analysis methodology is conducive to achieving TT informative and appellative functions under the guide of Skopos.