E-C Translation Of Business Agency Agreement From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

Business agency agreement (BAA) refers to the legal contract in which the rights and obligations between the Principal and the Agent is clearly stipulated. BAA is often used in the trade form of brokerage, and thus plays a very crucial role in international business activities. As an important branch of business contracts, BAA and its translation study have gained much attention from many translators and people working in business field. This thesis, in light of Nida’s functional equivalence theory, is to probe a study on BAA at lexical, syntactic and discourse levels with the hope of making a little contribution to the translation of BAA in the future.Nida’s functional equivalence theory is one of the most important translation theories in Western translation field. The theory argues that the nature of translation is reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style (Nida,2004:12). In the translation of functional equivalence, the translator concerns with that "the relationship between receptor and message should be substantially the same as that which existed between the original receptors and the message"(Nida,2007:159). In other words, the translation should be target reader-centered in which the translator pays much attention to readers’response. BAA is a legal document with special stylistic features. The nature of its translation aims at loyally and validly conveying the message of source agreement from meaning to style so as to exert the function with the equivalence to the target agreement and let receptors understand their rights and obligations in business agency transactions. All BAA have similarities of being precise, concise and solemn, which ask their translation to keep such stylistic equivalence at lexical, syntactic as well as discourse level.In one word, the translator should adopt the language of BAA standard and take readers’response into their consideration so as to accurately convey the equivalent message of the source agreement. Consequently, the readers can comprehend their rights and obligations, and the business agency activities thus can go on more smoothly.