As for our Chinese enterprises, only when a good job is done in the commercial contract translation can the trade bridge be built with other countries in the world. At the same time, in order to safeguard the rights and interests of both trade sides, it is often the condition when a large number of sentence patterns which are structurally complex and prolix are used. All these cases contribute to the troubles in the translation of the commercial trade contract. This paper tries to analyze the translation of commercial contracts under the view of skopos theory and proposes three principles for the translation, hoping to improve the translation of commercial contracts. These principles include the principle of accuracy and rigor, the principle of specific and clearness and the principle of completeness and expressiveness.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Previous Research on Translation of Commercial Contracts
Commercial contract is a kind of document of effects in law issues. Thus, we take a look at the overall picture, the language of commercial contract is ought to come down to the legal language. In recent years, the study of legal language has been oriented around the linguistic features and linguistic behaviors.
From the sight of the expression of structure, Chinese scholar Pan Qingyun summed up the basic features about the commercial contract and these features mainly include two systems which are representation structure and style structure. The representation structure is mainly made up of elements: the narration, the expression and the demonstration. In addition, another Chinese scholar Kang Shumin made an investigation about the stylistic features of foreign economic contract from the view of the specification and the style of the writing and he thought that the style is different from others, for the reason that rigorous diction, normal terms, standardized language, and euphemistic tone by which the commercial contract texts are characterized.
The researches mentioned-above are mostly about the register and literary form of the international commercial contract from the sights of formulation, semantics, vocabulary and others. However, there are still some other scholars who have made some explorations about the commercial contract at the level of language structure. For example, Ma Xiaofeng has once pointed that the writing style of legal documents written in English results in the requirements and restrictions of the use of vocabulary. It is required that the vocabulary should be standardized and accurate and the meaning be precise and defined and the direct-significanced. By making comparison between the commercial contract text and other contract texts from the sight of the grammar, Feng Xie analyzed that although there are amounts of declarations in contract text and others, the sentences in contract text are much longer than others, which is consistent with the function and the use of commercial contract. 源[自*优尔^`论\文"网·www.youerw.com/
With the prevalence of international commercial contract, the proportion of the practical researches which explores the commercial activities is increasing. Although there is a bit of theoretical trace in these researches, the practical and operable micro-researches take up a large proportion. In the book, International Trade Practical English Contract，the author introduces the characteristics of formats and clauses of different kinds of contracts and sums up the common trade terms and clauses used by the World Bank, the United States and the International Chamber of Commerce. In another book，the Practical Guide of International Sales Mode Contract，the author makes a summary about some important characteristics concerned with the applicable ranges, applicable laws, specific clauses and common clauses. In addition, Professors Hu Gensheng, Wang Chunhui and Sheng Yunzhen from Tsinghua University analyzed the format, the structure, the content and the legal wording of contract and some issues about the translation of international commercial contract in their coauthored book. 目的论视角下的商务合同的翻译(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_64361.html