On C-E Translation Of Business Contracts From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

With its rapid economic development and its joining the WTO, China’s trade cooperations with other nations are becoming increasingly close. In international trade cooperations, in order to maintain the rights and obligations of each trading party and to ensure regular tradings, it is necessary to sign business contracts. Therefore, business contracts play a more and more important role in trade cooperations. Meanwhile, it poses a severe challenge on the translation of business contracts. The functional equivalence theory holds that only when the relationship between receptor and message be substantially the same as that which existed between the original receptors and the message will it be called that the purpose of translation is achieved. Through analyzing, the author suggests that the functional equivalence theory has a guiding role for the C-E translation of business contracts. As the two or more trading parties who sign a contract come from different countries and bear different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, it is necessary to know the cultural and linguistic features of the country of the target language and the linguistic features of the business contracts. It is also necessary to translate the original texts by using expressions that fit the expression habit of the target language. From the perspective of functional equivalence, this thesis analyzes and combines the linguistic features of business contracts--the use of technical and formal terms; the use of idiomatic adverbs used in officialese and the use of long sentences. This thesis explores the C-E translation of business contracts from two aspects: the translation of business words and the translation of long sentences. It also summarizes some practical C-E translation skills such as using business technical terms correctly, supplementing idiomatic adverbs used in officialese rationally and mastering the conversion of part of speech flexibly; On the translation of long sentences in business contracts, several translation skills are provided such as sequential translation, division and non-sequential translation.