Research on Translation Strategies of Business English Contracts from the Perspective of Skopos Theory

Abstract

Global economic integration makes cross-border economic and trade cooperation more frequent. Business English contracts are core legal document to clarify rights and responsibilities of both parties and ensure transaction security. The translation quality can affect the success of cooperation and legitimate rights. Because business English contracts are professional and rigorous, and they have standardized format, involving knowledge from multiple fields, traditional equivalence translation theories are hard to meet their functional requirements. This can lead to translation deviations and legal risks. As the core theory of functional translation, Skopos theory says that "translation purpose determines translation strategy", and it can provide support for solving this dilemma. In fact, we use the perspective of functionalism and analyze the textual characteristics and translation difficulties of business English contracts. Also we explore translation strategies for this. This aims to enrich the practical application of functionalism, provide reference for translation practitioners, and help promote cross-cultural business communication. It can make up the gap between theory and practice in current research, and provide ideas for similar studies.