Functional Approach To Complex Expressions In Contracts For International Economy And Trade And The English-Chinese Translation Thereof

Legal English has long been criticized for its complex expressions. This paper aims to give a functional research on the complex expressions by focusing on one field---contracts for international economy and trade (hereinafter referred to as CIET) in an attempt to find out the necessity of existence of those complex expressions and probe into the E-C translation principles and strategies thereof.In the first chapter, the first two parts gives an overview of the background of the study, the problems to be addressed and the significance and purpose of writing. The second two parts is devoted to giving an exact definition of the main concepts involved in this paper. First, the legal instruments for international economy and trade are defined and the classification thereof is briefly introduced, on the basis of which the concept of CIET is examined. Then, by virtue of the classification of Vijay Bhatia for the factors causing the complexity of legal English, the author divides the complex expressions in CIET into technical terms, archaisms, loan words, specialized words, overlapping of synonyms, nominalization, modal auxiliaries, complex references, complex modifiers and long sentences.The second chapter is literature review, in which the author put forwards the theoretical basis of this paper---systemic functional grammar.The third chapter and the fourth chapter is the core of this paper. Since systemic functional grammar distinguishes three major kinds of meaning or functions: ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function, which are referred to as metafunctions. In Chapter Three, the metafunction of each kind of complex expression is concretely analyzed. And then, from the three metafunctions, the author intends to draw three translation principles for these complex expressions: Preciseness and all-inclusiveness principle, formalness and authority principle and normativeness and smoothness principle. And then, guided by the three principles and based upon the former translation methods, the translation strategies for each kind of complex expressions are put forward in Chapter Four.The fifth chapter is the conclusion of the whole paper.