Application Of Parallel Texts In Contract Translation

2018 is the 40 th anniversary of reform and opening up.With the increasing integration with the international community,there are more and more Sino-foreign joint venture projects.The contract text plays a very important role in the cooperation between the two parties.The bidding document,as one kind of contract texts,is a special type of text.The wording and style of the bidding document is quite special so it is a difficult point of translation.Guided by the theory of parallel texts,this paper summarizes how to select appropriate parallel texts for English-Chinese translation of bidding documents.By analyzing the selection criteria for parallel texts,the author finds that parallel texts are helpful in the translation of bidding documents in terms of efficiency and accuracy.The author previews and contrasts the source text and the parallel texts before translation,focusing on the comparison of vocabularies,sentence patterns and discourse structures.In the actual translation process,the author chooses the parallel texts which are the same as or similar with the source text in format,language features,theme and stylistic functions.The parallel texts are selected from the Chinese bidding document “Doctor Pioneer Park Phase II Project in Qidong High-tech Zone in Chinese” and the English-Chinese bilingual “Apple Service Agreement”.The analysis of the application of the parallel texts in the translation of United Nations Development Programme bidding documents suggests that in English-Chinese translation of bidding texts,parallel texts are helpful in deepening the understanding of relevant professional knowledge,helpful in confirming technical terms,especially proper nouns,judicial idioms and classical stylistic words,and helpful in imitating the inherent sentence structures and text structures of contract texts.It is hoped that the translation of the bidding documents and the application of parallel texts could provide some valuable references to relevant professional students,teachers and translators.