A Study On The Register Features In Translation Of International Sales Contracts

Since the latter half of the 20th century,the world has witnessed rapid global economic integration and phenomenal growth in international trade and investment.The most fundamental linkage in international business communication is the international business contract which directs and documents the whole transaction process.The thesis, within the framework of register theory,aims to study the register features from field, tenor,mode,by which means to further explore the application of register theory on E-C translation of International Sales Contracts.It is of qualitative and quantitative analysis combined.With a series of computation and tests carried out by Ant Cone and SPSS,this thesis examines 40 authentic sales contracts and systematically clarifies its distinctive lexical,grammatical and textual features by virtue of the analyses on choices in lexis,modality,and cohesion.Thus translation principles of formality and accuracy, as well as faithfulness and smoothness are suggested according to the linguistic features of contractual English in lexico-grammatical level.This thesis also finds out that International Sales Contracts are typical business English for Specific Purpose,the register as well as linguistic features they obtained are of significant difference with common English.It requires translators to consider the realization of register equivalence between source language and target language in the E-C translation.