An Report On The E-C Translation Of An Equity Joint Venture Contract

Contract is a kind of legal documents, and the legal protection of smooth foreign trade activities. English asa business language is increasingly accepted by people, to draw up the contract in English has also become akind of practice of foreign trade activities. As a result, high quality contract translation becomes increasinglyimportant for the parties to perform their respective rights and obligation. A good contract translation caneffectively avoid ambiguity and controversy. However, English contract, with its unique features at the aspectsof lexical, syntactical, textual and pragmatic brings much difficulty and complexity in contract translation.This report is based on the E-C translation of an equity joint venture contract. Totally7parts are containedin the report. At the very beginning is an overall introduction of the whole report, including the background andsignificance. The second part is project description, detailed information of source text, target readers andstylistic features of contract as well as translation tools are elaborated in this part. Pre-translation preparation isthe third part, mainly including the professional knowledge preparation and task-oriented preparation, namely,the study of translation theory, the analysis of source text and parallel text, the translation plan, and thecontingency plan. Project implementation is the fourth part, then the fifth part tells how the translation quality iscontrolled. The sixth part is case analyses. Based on Nida’s functional equivalence theory, the stylistic features ofboth Chinese and English contract are analyzed on level of contract structure, vocabulary, syntax and so on, thenthe author demonstrates two strategies fit for the translation of business investment contract, which are literaltranslation and domestication translation. In the end, a conclusion is presented to point out the limitations of thisreport as well as the major findings and reflections in the whole process of translation.Of course, the author has no way to cover all the conditions that we could meet in contract translation in ashort span of a translation analysis report. However, the requirements for contract translation, the distinctfeatures and translation strategies discussed in this report will provide some guidance more or less for those whoare going into the work of contract translation. Remember these features and strategies, and remind oneself ofmistakes appearing in the translation practice, can provide the translators with high quality translation.