Translation Strategies Of Contract Terms In Legal Context

Against the background of the economic globalization,commercial trade activities have become increasingly frequent and contracts are widely used.As legal documents,contracts have the attributes of validity,normalization and enforceability.Besides,contracts have some distinctive characteristics at the lexical level,syntactic level and discourse level.As a common genre in translation,contract translation is highly logical,professional and meticulous in diction,which poses a challenge to translators.Therefore,all translators of contracts,especially in English-Chinese translation,need to have a good command of the characteristics of contracts.It is of great significance for any translator,practitioner,and participant in business activities to effectively handle the translation of Chinese and English contracts.This thesis takes US-Korea FTA as an example,from the perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory,to discuss the translation principles such as faithfulness,exactness and consistency that should be followed in the translation of contract terms.First,on the lexical level,the specific terms in the legal documents,professional financial nouns and easily-confused words encountered in this project are summarized.In addition,at the syntax level,under the guidance of the translation strategies such as literal translation,addition,change of voice,recombination and detachment,the translation of the related long and complicated sentences is addressed.By presenting major difficulties and solutions in the project,this thesis aims to provide some feasible reference for contract translators.