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A Study On Chinese Translation Of English Business Contract From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

Posted on:2014-04-11Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y Y JiangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2255330425969499Subject:English translation
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
With the accelerating process of globalization and China’s rising international status, the interaction between China and the world is deepening. The exchanges in politics, economy and trade between China and the world is more and more frequent. International business contract provides guarantee for maintaining business relationships and proceeding business activities, which plays a crucial role in keeping the market order. Therefore, accurate translation of business contract is significant in lowering trade risks, reducing the legal disputes and ensuring the property and benefits free from being infringed. English business contract has its unique principles in selecting words and structuring sentences. It often uses archaic words and modal verbs, several synonyms often appear together and sentences often seem complicated and long. It usually states a clause in one or two sentences. While the Chinese contract seem much concise and accurate in selecting organizing phrases. Usually, a sentence is divided into several parallel clauses that each clause is relatively concise and comprehensive with the meanings stick out a mile. How to build a bridge between the two languages in business contract translation? Eugene A. Nida (Tan Zaixi,1999:XVI) points out that "Translation is using the most appropriate, natural and equivalent expression of one language to reproduce the information in the source language from semantics to style". However, the two languages represent two completely different cultures. Cultures may have similar factors but may not be completely the same. Therefore, the perfect translation that fully demonstrates the cultural connotation of source language is not possible, so that the translator can only reproduce the culture of source language as much as possible. In addition, if the meaning and culture can not being taken into account together, translators have to abandon formal equivalence in translation and change the original form to reproduce the original semantic and culture, namely "functional equivalence ". Tan Zaixi believes that "language communication comes from social occasion which acts as the background without which the communication will be meaningless"(1999:XVI).In short, translators should give priority to the function of communication, including the author, writing purpose, readers and the linguistic culture that the readers belong to. This shows that translation theory is in a macro perspective to guide translation practice. In this paper, the theory of "functional equivalence" is described, based on the analysis of English business contracts in principles of selecting words and constructing sentence, this paper combines with the examples of English business contract translation, exploring the theory of "functional equivalence" in the business contract translation in guiding significance and practical application and proposes the related principles and the translation strategies in translating English business contracts, hoping to provide the reference for accuracy and professional translation of English business contract.
Keywords/Search Tags:business contract, functional equivalence, translation strategies
PDF Full Text Request
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