Translation Of Complex Sentences In Chinese Business Contracts

Complex sentence is a typical Chinese sentence structure which consists of two or more clauses with logical connections. Through her own translation practice, the author of this thesis has found that there exist quite a few complex sentences in Chinese business contracts. Thus, giving correct translation of Chinese complex sentences is of great importance in faithfully reproducing Chinese business contracts. And making relevant studies is equally important for the correct translation of Chinese business contracts. The thesis applies theories of Chinese complex sentences to the studies of rendering complex sentences in Chinese business contracts into English. By comparing a number of complex sentences and summarizing their similarities, the paper expounds the characteristics of complex sentences in Chinese business contracts—complicated sentence structure and use of plentiful relatives. Based on this and the author’s translation practice, the paper goes further to analyze and explore some translation approaches and techniques.The author thinks that Chinese complex sentences can be translated into two or more English sentences if the clauses in them are not closely related; if the clauses are closely related, then the relevant complex sentences need to be translated into a complex sentence or a long sentence by using participial phrases, propositional phrases and so on to deal with clauses. When the clauses in Chinese complex sentences can find similar logical structure or similar time sequence in English, we can adopt linear translation approach to translate those sentences into English complex sentences or long sentences without changing their word order. Using proper translation approaches according to the features of sentence structures of complex sentences in Chinese business contracts, we are able to give proper translation of Chinese complex sentences into English, realizing functional equivalence between the original and target texts.