On E-C Translation Of Product Supply Agreement From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

For the past decades, China's rapid economic globalization and Chinese government's focus on the manufacturing industry have led to a large number of international manufacturing corporations settling down here in China, thus transnational cooperation in this field having been on the rise. To be transnational necessarily requires bilingual competence at least and to cooperate necessarily involves documents with legal effect. These years, with the supply chain expansion of the transnational corporations in the manufacturing field, the need for product supply agreements is growing with each passing day, which urgently calls for the bilingual persons for the translation task. An appropriate translation of such a product supply agreement can help both parties to understand their rights and obligations and is regarded as an important factor guaranteeing a successful cooperation, while an inappropriate or even incorrect one may cause communication barriers and even business loss or legal disputes. Therefore, great attention should be paid to translation of these agreements.In 2014, the author of this paper worked in Nanofilm Vacuum Coating Company,when the company started to cooperate with Microsoft Corporation. The first step to become a supplier of a transnational giant is to sign a product supply agreement, which is to stipulate each party's responsibilities and duties. The author is given the chance to be responsible for the translation of the Microsoft Product Supply Agreement from English into Chinese together with another colleague. The author is in charge of the translation of the main body and part of exhibit A of the supply agreement.Based on the translation practice of this Microsoft Product Supply Agreement in Nanofilm Vacuum Coating Company, the author attempts to study the translation of product supply agreements from the perspective of Skopostheorie in this paper. The author firstly discusses the preparation before translation, translation process and work after translation. Then, based on explanation of key concepts and principal rules of Skopostheorie and through analysis of the Skopos and translation brief as well as the linguistic features at lexical, syntactical, textual and stylistic levels of this supply agreement in question, the author investigates the application and guiding significance of Skopostheorie to and for translation of product supply agreements and summarizes the translation requirements and techniques. This Microsoft Product Supply Agreement is an authoritative reference in the manufacturing industry, therefore it is expected that the study of its translation can also be a helpful reference for the future agreement translation of such kind.