E-C Translation Of Business Contract Guided By Skopos Theory

With the rapid growth of international business and trade, the demand for E-C translation of business contracts has increased a lot in China. Business contracts, as legal documents, function to explicit and guarantee the rights and obligations of the contracting parties. The translation of business contracts plays an important role in international trade and minor mistakes may lead to huge losses. However due to the unique features of English business contracts, it is not easy to make a qualified E-C translation of business contracts. Hence, it is necessary and urgent to carry out research on E-C translation of business contracts and put forward some suggestions on the methods to improve E-C translation of business contracts.Based on the author’s practical translation of E-C business contract—Exclusive License and Distribution Agreement, this thesis aims to study E-C translation of business contracts guided by Skopos theory. The linguistic features of English business contracts are analyzed from three aspects. From lexical aspect, English business contracts feature frequent adoption of proper nouns, legal terms, twin words, archaic words, loan words and modal verbs. From syntactic aspect, English business contracts feature employment of long sentences, passive voice, present and future tense. As for textual aspect, the contracts highlight consistency and integrity. Based on the analysis of linguistic features, the thesis attempts to provide methods of translating English business contracts from the same three aspects. At lexical level, five translation methods are put forward, which are zero translation, word for word translation, omission, amplification and shift. At syntactic level, there are three methods consisting of translating in the original order, translating in the reversed order and division. And the textual format in E-C translation of business contracts should follow the consistency of writing conventions and integrity of textual format.