Comments On The English Version Of The Contract Law Of The P.R.C

Adopted at the Second Session of the Ninth National People's Congress, Contract Law of the People's Republic of China went into effect as of October 1st of 1999. The Contract Law, which comprises one of important constituents of the civil law and regulates the basic rules of market economy, plays a significant role in protection of contract parties'lawful rights and interests, maintenance of the social economy order and promotion of socialist modernization.The English version of the Contract Law of the People's Republic of China has been published by China Fangzheng Press in 2004. The publication of the English version will make certain contribution to regulating foreign investment, maintaining lawful rights and interests of foreign merchants, enhancing the international status of our nation and so on.Quite a few points are open to question in the English version of the Contract Law of Fangzheng Press. With linguistic knowledge, the author of the thesis carries on a careful analysis of the English version of the Contract Law, points out the defects in translation and proposes revised version correspondingly.The thesis consists of four chapters in all. The author in the first chapter gives a brief introduction to the position of the Contract Law in the nation's economic development and the significance of its English version. In the second chapter, the author mainly elaborates on the features of legal English in respect of lexicon, syntax and style and presents rich embodiments of such features in the English version of the law. The author pays more of his efforts on the fourth chapter in which he points out the defects of the English version in aspects of lexicon, consistency and undertranslation. The final chapter is the conclusion of the thesis, in which the author puts forward concrete methods that a translator may consult while translating Chinese legal texts into English.