A Study On Business Contracts Translation From The Perspective Of Functional Translational Theory

With the development of economy and globalization, business contract not only plays a very important role in promoting transnational economic trade and regularizing the market order, but also becomes a very significant legal basis for Chinese and foreign parties to do business and safeguard the interests of their rights. However, because the rules for the rights and obligations of both parties in the contract are not clear enough, or the words used by the contract are improper, or the meaning of the word is ambiguous, or the ideas expressed in this contract is too loose and broad, any party will consciously or unconsciously take advantage of these contractual gaps to avoid responsibilities and obligations, which will result in contract disputes, and even blackmail. Therefore, the quality of business contracts translation is having a more and more significant impact on the international trade. The distortion of the contract translation will cause ambiguity and uncertainty of the wording in the contract. How to do business contract translation well is very important.At present, the study on business contracts translation in China mainly focuses on the analysis of business contracts from the perspective of stylistics, register theory and functional grammar, but many inaccurate and mechanical translation problems still exist, so it needs theoretical guidance. In contemporary western translation theory, German functionalist translation theory, created in the 1970s, has become a rather mature theoretical system. The skopos theory, coherence rule, "function plus loyalty" principle put forward by functional school represented by Hans Vermeer, and the functional equivalence theory represented by Nida and Newmark, have a profound effect on the study of translation. However, the majority of domestic scholars mainly focus on the study of literary translation such as poetry translation, but they seldom do research on contract translation. The study on the translation of business contracts from the perspective of functionalist translation theory is a completely new perspective.How is the functionalist translation theory applied to guide the translation of business contract? Firstly, the author makes a literature review on the research status of business contract and its translation. Secondly, the author makes an introduction to the functionalist translation theory, and brings in some new conceptions like'source-text analysis theory','skopos theory','translation brief and'function plus loyalty principle'. Thirdly, the business contract texts are analyzed from macro level and micro level by the author. At macro level, the author analyzes the text type and skopos of business contract, illustrates the key steps for translation of business contracts, and uses a sample text to analyze the role of source-text analysis while translating business contract. At micro level, the characteristics of business contract language are analyzed from the perspective of vocabulary, phrase and sentence structure. The author tries to demonstrate the applicability of the functionalist translation theory in business contract translation, and has analyzed the inaccurate translation problems in business contracts such as inaccurate translation of technical terms, date, monetary terms and the like. Finally, a summary to the whole paper is made, and some suggestions for further study are presented.The author has become more and more skilled in the characteristics of business contracts and the use of functionalist translation theory by writing this thesis. Moreover, the author has tried to put forward some suggestions to avoid some mechanical and inaccurate translation, and provided the reference for the translators working on the business contracts translation, so as to make them take their responsibilities and do the contract translation much better.