A Report On The C-E Translation Of Chapter X Of The Tender Documents For Zimbabwe Parliament Building Assistance Project

With the development of globalization and cross-border commerce,international tendering becomes a common phenomenon.Contract management is the core part of tender documents,because it is related to the fundamental interests of all parties concerned.Therefore,the translation of contract management should arouse special attention of translators.This report is developed on the basis of C-E translation of chapter X of the tender documents for Zimbabwe Parliament Building Assistance Project—Tasks,Methods and Measures of the Contract Management.The text about contract management can be categorized as legal text.By comparing the lexical and syntactic features of standard Chinese and English legal texts,translation difficulties and key points can be identified.At the lexical level,English and Chinese have many differences-modal verbs and various tenses are widely used in English;Chinese often uses four-character phrases,which are also key points and difficulties in C-E translation.However,English legal texts and Chinese legal texts still have some lexical characteristics in common,such as the broad use of archaisms and borrowed words,accurate use of legal terms,and the coexistence of vagueness and accuracy of words.At the syntactic level,although Chinese and English standard legal texts both have the tendency of using complex declarative sentences,composition rules of each elements in sentences are dissimilar.Meanwhile,passive voice is more frequently used in standard English legal text than it is in Chinese legal text.Besides,nominalized structure in standard English legal text is usually used to replace Chinese sentence or clause.In addition,non-subject sentences account for a large part in standard Chinese legal text.Instead,they are rarely seen in parallel English texts.These similarities and differences are encountered during the C-E translation of the material in this report.Chapter two mainly discusses the distinguishing characteristics of Chinese and English legal texts,and their reflections in the source text of this report.In a word,translation could be finished well only through grasping the features of source language(hereafter referred as SL)text and target language(hereafter referred as TL)text.J.C.Catford introduced the concept of translation shifts in his translation theory,and put forward the analytical model in 1965.Catford's translation shifts include level shifts and category shifts.Level shifts mainly focus on the shifts between grammar and lexis.Category shifts include structure shifts,class shifts,unit shifts and intra-system shifts.Catford's concept of translation shifts provides significant and practical strategies for the translation below the sentence level.Since the translating difficulties in C-E translation of the material analyzed in this report are concentrated on the words,phrases,clauses and sentences,Catford's concept of translation shifts is used as the theoretical guidance and translation strategy in this report.This report categorizes and analyzes the translation shifts during the translation process of SL text.Besides,this report has found that there are also other shifts,which are above sentence level,namely cohesion shifts and semantic shifts.The report intends that future researchers can refocus on J.C.Catford's translation shifts and its practicability.Moreover,it could be better if the report can provide a new perspective for the future exploration of translation strategy concerning the tender documents and contract management.