A Report On The English-chinese Translation Of Business Contract Under The Guidance Of Functionalist Translation Theory

Since the reform and opening-up policy has been adopted for more than four decades,the number of economic cooperation and trading contacts between China and other countries has been increased dramatically.After the Belt and Road initiative was introduced to the world,the trading activities between China and the involved countries also entered into a brand new period of development.Business contract is a special literary form that helps parties who engage in the related business activities to achieve certain economic purpose or to clarify their rights and obligations.Featured by rigorous accuration,normalization,and legal binding force,business contract plays an essential role in all sorts of trade contacts.The translation material used in this report is Supply Contract for the Mounting System of Nikopol Photovoltaic Power Plant in Ukraine.The author was assigned to finish this translation task alone for the marketing department of China Qingjian Construction(CNQC).This contract stipulated the rights and obligations apart from the main body of the contract.This contract has three attachments,respectively technical requirements,form of delivery certificate and form of completion certificate.The target readers of the translation text were some managers who are involved in the project,and the purpose of translating this contract into Chinese was helping them understand the clauses of the contract along with the rights and obligations.In the past,some traditional translation theorists argued that the translation activities should meet the demand of equivalence,however,in the 1970 s,the functionalist translation theory was raised by German functionalist,the representatives of which are Katharina Reiss,Hans J.Vermeer and Christinae Nord.The Skopos Theory and the theory of translation action were regarded as two core theories of the functionalist translation studies.Vermeer thought that the purpose of translation determines the method of translation.What is more,the functionalist translation theory put the position of translator above the source text writers.On the one hand,as far as business contract itself is concerned,it has certain force of law,and on the other hand,the international language of the business contract is English.And to be more specific,the English used in the contract is legal English.According to the features of the legal English,the translation of business contract requires the translator to be purposeful when translating the contract in order to make the features of the business contract foregrounded.This requirement is exactly the sameas the viewpoint of functionalist translation theory,thus,the author firmly believes the functionalist translation theory has a significant guiding function to the translation of business contract.What this translation report mainly contains are as follows: In chapter one,the author briefly introduces the translation text and the translation practice in which the author takes a part to illustrate the significance of the topic of this report.As for chapter two,the author explains the process of this translation practice.In the following chapter there is a brief introduction to the business contract and the functionalist translation theory as the literary review.For the next chapter of the report,the author goes further to introduce the English business contract language in terms of its functions and stylistic features by using some examples.Chapter five combines the theory and translation of the supply contract to do further analysis,and some translation strategies adopted to study the examples from previous chapter are referred.In the last chapter,the author makes a summary and illustrate the experience gained from the translation practice.The author has some limits to do the research,but still hopes this report can provide some practical experience and positive guidance to the translators who are working with business contract translation.