Translation Of Commercial Contracts Under The Guidance Of Skopos Theory

As the basis for the development of China’s economy and international business, and theguarantee to the legal rights of the signing parties, the commercial contract and its translationhave become a bridge which connects business with business, and country with country.However, in the translation of commercial contracts, there are great challenges in thetranslation of words, sentence structure and voice. Therefore it is very difficult for translatorsto render every archaic word, modal verb and complex prepositional phrase with assurance.And it is also not easy for them to make good choices of sentence structures or voices. Thetranslating of commercial contracts is a kind of highly purposive activity. In this thesis, theauthor tends to conduct a case study in the translation of an agency agreement based onSkopos Theory in order to explore appropriate translation strategies for the translating ofcommercial contracts and to find ways to improve the quality of the translated texts, whichare very important to avoid any misunderstandings between the parties involved in acommercial contract and to further guarantee the healthy development of the market economyand foreign trade. By conducting a case study in the translation of an agency agreement basedon Skopos Theory to explore translation strategies for translating commercial contracts, thefollowing foundings can be made:1.The application of skopos rule is a crucial requirement to the translation ofcommercial contracts, to fulfill the requirement, the translators need to translate thedefinitions and terms in the original text clearly and precisely and the translated commercialcontracts should be as impartial and solemn as the original text;2. The application of coherence principle is the essential requirement of translatingcommercial contracts, thus the translators should guarantee the intelligibility and validityunder certain cultural and social conditions by interpreting and translating every new andinexplicable definitions in the commercial contracts conforming to Chinese modes of thinkingand codes of language; split and recombine the long and complex sentences in the contracts,and take the linguistic features of Chinese into consideration when translating the passive voices in the original text.3. The application of fidelity principle is the basic requirement of translatingcommercial contracts, to satisfy this requirement, the translators should pay special attentionto the modal verbs used in commercial contracts. And under the fidelity principle, thetranslators should pursue the equivalence communicative functions between source texts andtranslated texts, rather than the equivalence of words and expressions.