Translation Of Modal Verbs In Business Contract Under The Guidance Of Skopos Theory

Business contract plays a key role in the international economic activities, and itstypical feature is the high-frequency modal verbs used to provide rights andobligations of the contracting parties. Any distortion or ambiguity appearing in thetranslation of business contract might cause a legal dispute between two parties. In thisthesis, with the purpose of improving the translation quality of modal verbs in businesscontract, the author, under the guidance of Skopos theory, makes a detailed study onthe modal verbs used frequently in business contract, based on the relevant studies ofother experts or scholars from various perspectives. The author applies the three rulesinto the examples confronted in the translation exercises, and chooses the best versionof modal verbs after a detailed analysis.Starting from the analysis of language features of English business contract,including lexical features and syntactic features, the author focuses on a typicalfeature---the high-frequency modal verbs, then makes a broad classification accordingto various pragmatic functions. Meanwhile, the author introduces purposefully Skopostheory which emphasizes mainly intended functions of the target language, aftergenerally summarizing the relevant studies on business contract or modal verbs basedon various linguistic perspectives. Furthermore, the author applies Skopos theory andthe three rules into the translation examples which are classified based on varioussentence structures, including positive sentence (must/shall/may/will), negativesentence (may not/shall not) and two special structures---“Subject+shall+be+predicative”&“Should+subject+verb”. Subsequently, the authorpoints that the equivalence of modal verbs in business contract depends on thesentence structure.In this thesis, the study will not only provide a new perspective for the research onbusiness contract translation owing to three rules guiding the modal verbs’ translationsmoothly, but also open up a new thinking for translators, who can apply the threerules when translating business contract, and further improve the translation quality ofbusiness contract.