Report On The Translation Of Equipment Purchase Contract Under The Guidance Of Skopos Theory

This is a report on the translation of an excerpt from the Equipment Purchase Contract between Shandong Weiqiao Aluminium and Electricity Co., Ltd and the seller of the contract equipment. The original text of this translation task is an English business contract, which is not only a kind of economic text, but also a legal text with certain legally binding force. In the contract, the responsibilities and obligations of the buyer and seller are clearly stipulated with strict legal bindings. Instead of pursuing artistic beauty, the language of the contract is more characterized as logical, accurate, clear and organized. Therefore, the wording of the translation should be precise, logical, normative and complete in order to avoid any misunderstandings or disputes. The translator was authorized by Shandong Weiqiao Aluminium and Electricity Co., Ltd to translate the contract, aiming that the commissioner(the buyer) and the seller can have an explicit understanding of their rights and obligations respectively, and that the contract can be performed correctly without any disputes so as to make sure the trade between both the two parties involved proceeds smoothly.On the basis of the language characteristics of the contract, Skopos theory is adopted by the translator to guide the translation process. According to Skopos theory, translation essentially is a cross-culture communication behavior, which emphasizes that translation is conducted with certain purpose, and purpose is the most principal factor of the complete translation process. The translator shouldn't necessarily follow slavishly the footsteps of the original writer and the surface structure of the original text. Instead, the translator should consider the professional background, expectations and communicative needs of the target readers in translation, which requires the translator to transfer the information between the original text and target text correctly, so that the target readers can have a correct and clear understanding of the contract. Consequently, the translation strategy of preciseness is adopted by the translator in the translation of this equipment purchase contract. With the guidance of this strategy, this report focuses on the analysis of preciseness on terminology, prepositions,conjunctions, modal verbs, passive voices and attributive clauses, and discusses how to keep the preciseness in the business contract translation.Based on the Skopos theory and the preciseness translation strategy, this report centers on the translation of mechanical equipment purchase contract, and aims to provide relativeinformation about equipment purchase contract for the business professionals, and offer a reference for the translation studies of equipment purchase contract.