A Study Of The Legal Translation From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

With the rapid development of Chinese economy and enhancement of Chineselegal knowledge, the number of translations of legal documents has increased. A largenumber of legal documents, including contracts and agreements have been translatedbetween Chinese and English in order to meet the need of trade and diplomacy. Howto translate these documents turns out to be a question for the translators. Owing tothe fact that legal translation between Chinese and English has not achieved a certainstandard, it is urgent for us to investigate into a systematic way of doing legaltranslation.Functional translation theory is of great guiding significance, and Skopos theoryhas an explanatory power. Skopos theory frees the translation from source text andprovides a brand new perspective for the translators. General Conditions ofEngineering Procurement and Construction Contract is selected as the translationtarget. This report is composed of four parts. The first part offers a brief introductionto the translation project, mainly including the background of the project, the briefintroduction to and the preparation for the translation. The second part introduces thefunctional translation theory, especially Skopos theory. The third part combines thethree principles of Skopos theory to explain real cases. In addition, this part is dividedinto four sections. The first section focuses on the application of the skopos rule incontract texts. It focuses on the accurateness, preciseness, distinctiveness andconciseness of the translation. The second section focuses on the application of thecoherence rule in contract texts. The third section focuses on the application of thefidelity rule in contract texts. The forth section describes the relation of the threeprinciples and the guiding significance in contract texts. The last part points out theproblems and unsolved translation problems appeared during translation.