On The Principles And Strategies Of Translating Business Contracts-From A Functional Grammar Perspective

With the economic development and globalization, business contracts are playing an increasingly important role in promoting international economic transactions and regulating the market order. However, many of the translated business contracts are inaccurate, unprofessional and even awkward, not to mention some mistakenly-translated message. These unqualified translations not only lead to legal disputes and financial losses, but also disorder the international market. Principles and strategies guiding the translation of business contracts are called for. The past relevant studies on business contracts translation are characterized by pure discussion of translation skills, few of which are devoted to a scientific and systematic analysis. In view of this situation, this dissertation is an attempt to make a Functional Grammar analysis of business contracts, linking the situational context, text functions and language choices thereof in a systematic manner. By adopting this approach, this dissertation attempts to formulate three specific principles of translating business contracts according to three text functions determined by the situational context in which business contracts occur, and then to unfold what strategies should be adopted accordingly on the micro linguistic level, thus providing a new perspective of studying business contracts translation and offering both the theoretical and practical guidance of translating business contracts.