A Report On The C-E Translation Of Commodity House Purchase And Sale Contract

Contract, as a legal agreement, stipulates the obligations and rights for both the buyer and the seller.And almost all transactions of international trade are carried out by entering into a contract, so how tohandle contract well is quite important, which requires us to learn how to translate contract, only so, can weaccurately express our idea and standing and can we lessen international business dispute and loweroperation cost. This report totally includes six parts. The first part is introduction, mainly demonstrating thedefinition of contract and the importance of contract translation. The second part is project description,briefly introducing requirements of the client and task description, which points out the three speciallinguistic features (accuracy, standardization and conciseness) and legitimate principle of contract. Thethird part is pre-translation preparations, including project planning, preparations of tools and reference,formulation of the glossary, translation strategies of Chinese-English (thereafter shortened as C-E) contracttranslation and contingency plan. As for translation strategies, based on one of the most important theory inthe functional school of translation studies---“Skopostheory”, this report first demonstrates thatSkopostheory presents the main instructional function in C-E contract translation, and after a series ofanalysis, the author insists translator should adopt foreignizing method in the most cases. Then, the reportshows that “faithfulness” is the basic standard for C-E contract translation in accordance with the speciallinguistic features and legitimate principle. The forth part is quality control, which is strictly completedthrough four steps---self-examination, peer review, group supervision and client response. The fifth part iscase analyses. With the guide theory of Skopostheory and basic principle of “faithfulness”, the reportdeeply analyses some typical cases in Commodity House Purchase and Sale Contract both from theperspective of wording and sentence patterns. For wording, the author discusses proper use of modal verbs,repetitive use of same words of phrases, paralleling use of synonyms, proper use of archaic words and thetranslation of familiar words or phrases. For sentence patterns, the author focuses on common conditionals,the translation of some useful sentence and common use of active voice instead of passive voice. The sixthpart is conclusion. In this part, the author makes a reflection after the translation project, emphasizing thattranslator should not only be familiar with translation strategies and basic principle of contract, but also payattention to the grasp of appropriate language field and comprehension of different cultures. In the final, abrief summary on the implications and limitations of the translation is made to conclude this report.