A Report On The English Translation Of "Contract For Gas Turbine Power Plants Construction Project"

With the rapid development of economic globalization and China's opening up,international trade is occupying an increasingly more important position in China's overall economic activities.Accordingly,the translation of contracts between Chinese and English is playing an increasingly more significant role in Chinese companies' economic activities in cooperation with foreign corporations.In such an economic background,the present translator receives from a translation company the task of translating a business contract from Chinese into English.This contract defines the responsibilities of both the Chinese and foreign parties clearly so as to guarantee a healthy and smooth cooperation between the two parties.Since no existing English versions of this contract have been produced,the present translator's translation is obligatory and original.To deal with the challenges in contract translation,the translator completes the task via the application of the Systemic Translation Approach,composed of firstly a systemic procedure of various stages and steps and secondly the systemic selection and employment of complementary translation principles,methods or techniques in the transformation of words,sentences and textual constructions.In terms of the translation process,the present translator carries out the translation work in a procedure of four interconnected stages in accordance to the Systemic Translation Approach: preparation work,source text comprehension,target text writing,and follow-up work.In the preparation stage,the translator initially applies for and accepts a task of translating a business contract — Contract for Gas Turbine Power Plants Construction Project — from the translation company where she did her internship,and then makes preparations for the translation job by collecting relevant resources especially bilingual texts of similar contracts and constructing a bilingual terminology.In the source text comprehension and target text writing stages,the translator makes an analysis of the original contract systemically in four steps,i.e.,general overview,contextual investigation,textual scrutiny,and temporal examination,and writes out the translation in four parallel steps,i.e.,general overview,contextual setting up,textual designing,and temporal operation.In the follow-up stage,the translator accomplishes the translation job by revising and proofreading the whole translation to ensure that it is functionally adequate for the users.In terms of the employment of translation methods,the translator complementarily applies such rules as faithfulness,elegancy,and expressiveness,and such methods as literal translation and free translation,in particular contexts for particular purposes in accordance with the Systemic Translation Approach,placing emphasis on the accurate conveyance of meaning of the source text.For the translation of modal verbs,archaic words and special terms,the translator adopts conventional translations if they are adequate for the present translation purpose.For the translation of sentences involving active-passive voice shift and conditional clause treatment,the translator mainly follows traditional ways of treatment.For the translation of textual constructs,the translator flexibly uses English lexical,grammatical and logical connectors to realize the textual cohesion and coherence in the target text.The undertaking of this contract translation task is meaningful practically.Firstly,it realizes the process of international economic activity between the Chinese and the foreign companies through its target text,and is thus beneficial to promoting economic exchange between two countries.Secondly,this experience of contract translation may be referred to by later translators in their future work of contract translation for the purpose of more efficient translation.