Abstract

In recent years, the foreign trade of China develops quickly. The contract carries the obligation and responsibility between seller and buyer. Each word’s translation will concern the interests of contracting parties. Register theory, as a core theory of systemic-functional linguistics, used extensively in translation. 

Comparing with other papers, this thesis focuses on coming up with problems and difficulties in contract translation, analyzes the stylistic features of contract wording, and applies Register theory to finding strategies of business contract translation. That is to say, this thesis studies contract translation from field equivalence, tenor equivalence and mood equivalence of register theory. Field equivalence is realized by technical terms, common words with uncommon meaning, juxtaposition of synonyms and transitivity patterns to make translators master the language environment of contract translation. Tenor equivalence is realized by formal words, archaic words and modality to indicate the formality of contract translation. Mode equivalence is realized by thematic and information structure and cohesion to help the translator understand the contract translation more accurately. 

The study result indicates that contract translation would be better if using register equivalence, which helps readers understand word’s special meaning under a special circumstance. And register theory is more suitable for contract translation.

Key  words:  contract translation; register theory; strategies

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1 Introduction-1

2 Literature Review-2

3 Features and Register in contract translation-3

3.1 Features of Business contract-3

3.1 .1 Lexical features-3

3.1.2 Syntactical features-4

3.1.3 Difficulties of the translation of business contract-5

3.2 Register theory-6

3.2.1 Definition of register-6

3.2.2 Three variables of register-6

3.2.3 Register variables and meta function-7

3.2.4 Application of register in translation-7

4 Strategies of coping difficulties in contract translation-8

4.1 Equivalence of field in contract translation-8

4.1.1 Lexical choices-8

4.1.2 Transitivity system-10

4.2 Equivalence of tenor in contract translation-12

4.2.1 Lexical choices-12

4.2.2 Modality-14

4.3 Equivalence of mode in contract translation-14

4.3.1 Thematic and information structure-15

4.3.2 Cohesion-16

5 Conclusion-17

References-19