A Report On The Translation Of IBM Customer Agreement

An agreement is legally the synonym of a contract. It possesses the characteristics of formal words, rigorous logic and stylized language. The selected material for the translation practice is a Customer Agreement of the International Business Machines Corporation(IBM) :IBM Customer Agreement, including six parts: General Terms, Warranties, Machine Terms,Licenses for Machine Code and Other Internal Licensed Code, License for ICA Programs and Services Terms. And the Agreement governs transactions by which Customer purchases Machines, obtains Program licenses, and acquires Services from IBM.This report summarizes the translation practice from the aspects of Task Description,Process Description, Case Analysis and Summary. In Task Description, the translator introduces the content of the source text, the research object and research significance of the project. Process Description is divided into two parts: Preparation before Translation and Process Analysis. The Preparation before Translation part introduces the five aspects of the preparation work. They are respectively the preparation of background knowledge, parallel texts, glossary, translation tools and translation theory. The Preparation of Translation Theory part elaborates the translation theory that the translator applies: Newmark's Text Typology and two translation strategies he proposed for different types of texts: Semantic Translation and Communicative Translation. And some related studies about Text Typology are briefly introduced. In the Process Analysis part, the translator introduces the specific process and some difficulties of the translation practice. In the Case Analysis part, translation methods to solve word and sentence problems are analyzed in the guidance of Semantic Translation and Communicative Translation, including cross validation method to confirm the exact meaning of some specialized words and some specific methods to translate long sentences. In the end,the translator summarizes some ideas about this translation practice.