On Translation Of Chinese Sales Contracts From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

One of the most important subjects for social development is to make theinformation generated from one kind of language correctly transferred to another kind oflanguage so that people from different cultural backgrounds and linguistic contexts couldunderstand each other. With the expansion of economic activities, relationships amongdifferent countries have to be bond by rules and law. These rules could be in oral form orin written form, which are regarded as contracts for international activities. The contractsbelong to one type of the legal texts which have legal force to stipulate the rights andresponsibilities of parties involved.Contracts, as legal texts, their drafting and expression are definitely distinctive dueto different cultural backgrounds and cultural habits. This paper analyzes the translationof Chinese sales contracts with the application of Eugene A. Nida’s functionalequivalence theory. It emphasizes that readers in the target language culture should betaken into consideration. Meanwhile a natural and easy form should be adopted for thepurpose of making the translated text understandable and acceptable to the target readers.A good translation would be the one that could convey the meaning and spirit of theoriginal without considering too much to the form.How to correctly convey the meaning and spirit of the original text to the targetlanguage readers has been a focus for English researchers and learners in legal field.Sales contracts are commonly referred to in international business activities. First of all,the definition and language features of sales contracts are presented. And then with theguidance of functional equivalence theory, detailed analysis is illustrated from words,sentences and syntax.Functional Equivalence Theory is a comprehensive system. Through discussions offunctional equivalence theory, the core requirements are pointed out. These corerequirements are applied to the translation of Chinese sales contract with examplespresented to make the illustration more practical. It is stressed that meaning and sprit of the original text should be correctly expressed and conveyed to the English readers inorder to avoid any misunderstandings and disputes from the content. At last, the papertakes a typical Chinese sales contract as an example combined with the translationcriterion proposed above.As a matter of fact, the study of sales contracts has a long history; until now it stilldraws great attention. Due to the distinct style and language features of a contract,especially the words that are usually used in daily life will have a different meaning whenit appears in a contract, people are attracted by the study of its content and translation.This paper is going to provide a guide to the practice of contract translation to somedegree. At the same time, there are some limitations as well, which stimulates the futuredevelopment in this field.