A Functionalist Approach To The Translation Of International Business Contract

International business transaction is becoming more and more frequent owing to the reinforcement of globalization. As one of the developing countries, China establishes more and more business relationships with other countries. An international business contract (hereinafter refers to IBC) as an agreement enforced by law takes a significant role in cross-border business transaction. Therefore, translation of IBC is of vital importance in the establishment of commercial relationship and implementation of relevant contract. However, people commonly think that strict literal translation and textual equivalence should be adopted in translating IBC as a type of legal documents. People generally adopt the traditional bottom-up methodology to study the translation of IBC. Most researches on contract translation are focused on the micro-elements such as lexical expressions, syntactic structures and textual organizations. Achievements are mostly restricted in some linguistic aspects and no in-depth theoretical guidance is available.Functionalist translation theories provide a new perspective for translational action. They emphasize the effect of the intended function of the target text in translation. As the kernel of functionalism, skopostheorie persists that translation is an intentional action and the prime principle determining any translation process is the intended function or the skopos of the overall translational action. Moreover, functionalism renders the translator much higher status and much more freedom than ever. The translator is entitled to adopt different translation strategies in order to achieve the skopos, which goes along with the tendency that translator is encouraged to incorporated certain creativity in the translation of legal documents.This thesis aims at discussing the applicability and rationality of functionalist translation theories in the translation of IBC and employs the top-down methodology in translation which is recommended by functionalists. First of all, it introduces the main content of functionalist translation theories and the definition, features and category of IBC. Secondly, within the framework of functionalism, it analyzes some macro-elements of IBC such as the agents involved in the translational action, the translation brief, the text type, the skopos, the translation type and four translation rules, namely, the skopos rule, the coherence rule, the fidelity rule and the rule of function plus loyalty. Finally, it furthers the study into some micro-elements of IBC on the lexical, syntactic and textual levels and accordingly summarizes some key points in translation through practical examples. Based on these points it puts forward some translation strategies and techniques within the framework of functionalism.