Translation Of International Trade Contracts In Perspective Of Functional Theories From Germany

With the development of globalization and the frequency of trading, International Trade Contracts, as a kind of special legal text type, is playing more and more important role. At present, doing research on translation of international trade contracts is needed and significant. However, researches involving in this field mainly emphasize on the dealing with the micro-elements such as structure, language, or words adoption. Great importance is attached to the micro-equivalence but little attention is paid to the text function and the translation skopos. Taking English-Chinese translation of ITC as research topic, Functional-Skopostheorie as the main theoretical framework, and combined with the linguistic features of ITC, the present thesis makes an attempt to explore the features of translation of international trade contracts, the proper adoption of translation strategies and methods under the influence of Functional-Skopostheorie. Finally, this thesis also probes into the proper assessment for evaluation of quality of translation of ITC.As translation version of international trade contracts is concerned, TT has the same function as the ST. The ideal translation is TT has delivered the skopos and function that ST delivered to the target receivers accurately and correctly. The all information involved in ST is required to be exactly and fully delivered from quality to quantity and from language to style to guarantee TT having highly consistency with ST. thus make the TT and the ST conduct the same function, in order to maintain the authoritativeness of legal texts. Besides, in view of the linguistic features of international trade contracts, TT is expected to take ST as the copy model and follow the steps of ST cautiously. Therefore, adopted translation strategies can be concluded as"documentary is mainly employed and instrumental is complementary". Abiding by the faithfulness and accuracy as top principle, literal translation strategy shall be adopted in most translation situations, but considered the differences in linguistic and culture between English and Chinese, some techniques such as shift of passive voice to positive voice may be employed in favor of target receivers in translating ITC from English to Chinese. Assessment of the quality of translation of ITC is expected to be explained both at macro level and micro level. The former mainly refers to the realization of skopos and the functional achievement, while the latter includes word adoption, syntactic features, and textual patterns.Translation of schools has tried to find a universally applicable theory, but the fact is that so far such theories haven't appeared. Functional-Skopostheorie isn't the exception. During the analysis of translation of international trade contracts, the theory also reveals its imperfectness. To translation of international trade contracts, we cannot take any means just in order to realize the skopos, without considering the difference between English and Chinese and the features of translation of ITC. In addition, the ST not only offers"part"or"whole"information for TT, but ST is the model that TT must follow. ST is predominant and not allowed to be marginalized. Therefore, the consistency between ST and TT is required to be first and foremost criteria for evaluation of translation of ITC. Moreover, Translators are expected to produce the exactly same TT to the same ST, which is quite different from literature translation. TT is required to be so consistent with the ST that the translation even can be reversible.