C-E Translation Of Business Contracts: From The German Functionalist Perspective

With the development of the economic globalization, business transactions between China and foreign countries have increased enormously. In the international economic activities, business contracts become important legal documents to promote business transactions and protect the rights of the contracting parties. Hence, the business contract translation also plays a more and more important role in international trade activities and the study of it becomes a very important subject for translators. At present, a large number of scholars focus on the research in this domain from different perspectives and put forward a lot of guiding translation strategies and principles. However, these researches mainly deal with the micro-elements. Meanwhile, great importance is attached to the micro-equivalence but little attention is paid to the text function and the translation purpose. Moreover, in practice, some business contracts are translated inaccurately, unprofessionally, mechanically and even wrongly. Consequently, the purposes of contract translation are hardly met. Therefore, the study of business contract translation should go into depth and its practice still needs theoretical guidance.Among modern translation theories in western countries, the functionalist translation theory proposed by German functionalists breaks through traditional equivalence-based linguistic translation theories and provides a new perspective for translation practice. Taking translation as an action with a given purpose, this theory emphasizes the function of the target text in the target culture. According to this theory, it is the function or the purpose of the target text that determines what translation methods and strategies should be chosen. In order to fulfill the expected function of the target text, linguistic forms of the source text should be changed to adapt to the target culture and the target readers. Furthermore, translators are offered much more freedom in this theory. Under the guidance of this theory, translators are encouraged to make full use of the information of the source text and choose any effective strategy to meet the expected purpose of a translation.Translating business contracts also aims at realizing certain purpose. So the present paper attempts to study the business contract translation from the perspective of German functionalism. In this thesis, the macro-micro research method is adopted to prove the applicability of the functionalist translation theory and its relevant principles to the Chinese business contract translation. Additionally, some translation techniques to realize the communicative purpose in translating Chinese business contracts are also explored under the guidance of this theory, by combining the macro-level translation purpose and the textual function with the micro-level lexical expressions and syntactic structures.This paper is structured as follows:Chapter One mainly introduces the research background, the significance of this study and its layout.Chapter Two provides a literature review. In this chapter, the definition of contracts and business contracts is firstly introduced. Then, the relevant studies of the business contract translation are reviewed, which mainly covers the research on the linguistic features of business contracts and the business contract translation. After that, some deficiencies existent in previous studies are pointed out. Finally, a discussion about the study of the functionalist translation theory in China is conducted.Chapter Three is the theoretic framework in which the origin and the development of the functionalist translation theory are firstly introduced. The representative scholars of functionalism of German school and their contribution to the translation theory are also mentioned. Then, the main concepts and principles proposed by German functionalists are presented in detail, including Skopostheorie and its three rules, namely, the skopos rule, the coherence rule and the fidelity rule, Nord's function plus loyalty and two translation methods, i.e. equifunctional translation and homologous translation.Chapter Four, as the main part of this dissertation, analyzes the applicability of the functionalist translation theory to the business contract translation and proposes some translation techniques guided by this theory. This chapter firstly, from the perspective of functionalism, analyzes the function of business contracts, the type of business contracts and the purposes of the C-E translation of business contracts. After analysis, it points out that there are double functions of business contracts, namely, providing information and regulating behavior, which aims at conveying information of rights, duties, benefits and obligations as well as regulating the contracting parties' behavior. Additionally, the functions of the target text are the same as that of the source text so the equifunctional translation method can be adopted to realize the communicative purpose of translation accurately. Then, the feasibility of applying the functionalist translation theory to translating Chinese business contracts is analyzed. After elaboration, the author holds that the skopos rule can provide a general guidance to the business contract translation; the coherence rule and the fidelity rule can provide two basic requirements to realize the function of the target text; the loyalty principle can provide the moral principle for translators; and two translation methods are helpful to deal with the fixed pattern of business contracts. Finally, by combining the macro analysis of business contracts from the functionalism with the special language features at the micro-level, the author proposes some translation techniques which are helpful to realize the function of the target text.On the basis of analysis above, Chapter Five draws a conclusion that the functionalist translation theory can be applied to translating Chinese business contracts. The process of translating business contracts is also a process of diction choice in accordance with the translation purpose. Therefore, translators should not only consider language features such as lexical expressions, syntactic structures and textural forms but also take the text function and the translation purpose into account. Only in this way can the communicative effect of the C-E translation of business contracts be realized with the translation quality improved.