Study On E-c Business Contract Translation-functionalist Approach

With the continuous development of China's market economy and deepening of reform and opening up, especially since China's entry into the WTO, foreign trade becomes more frequent. To ensure smooth business activities, it appears that the signing of business contracts, the business media, is essential. Therefore, the quality of business contract translation is particularly important. The development of foreign trade attracts more and more scholars study the translation of business English, but not so many research business contracts as a specialized study. Among these scanty study books and articles, there are studies from stylistic approach, from systemic functional grammar approach, as well as from functional equivalence approach. They have put forward many translation methods and translation strategies from different perspectives. But there is a few articles studying from functionalist approach. This thesis studies business contract translation from functionalist approach, aiming to explore whether English business contract has a better translation into Chinese under the guidance of this approach. Different from many other academic articles, the thesis discusses the features of English and Chinese business contract respectively from three aspects—lexical level, syntactic level and textual level, and reveals the functions of business contract translation; then analyzes the factors influencing E-C business contract translation. After that, through applying the theory to E-C business contract translation, the author concludes its strategy. Finally, the thesis exemplifies one purchase contract as a concrete research object, and analyzes its translation brief and translation methods to guide other different E-C business contracts translation. The conclusion is that the functionalist approach provides a new theoretical basis on studying E-C business contract translation. The theory directs the translator to focus on the translation function or the communicative purpose of business contract translation instead of the limited scope of equivalence between source text and target text, guides translators in analyzing a text, and shows what methods to use through applying the translation brief into E-C business contract translation in order to gain a good effect. This thesis mainly applies comparative analysis and data analysis to study, seeking to make a contribution to translation in this field.