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tract has five lexical features including archaic words, formal words, terms, modal verbs, and juxtaposition. Archaic words are frequently used in business contracts, because these words can make business contracts more formal and solemn as well as more exact and concise. Compound adverbs beginning with “here”, “there” or “where” followed by some prepositions are the most commonly used archaic words in English business contracts. Such as, hereafter, hereby, whereby and so on are all archaic words. Formal words often serve to make business contracts more solemn and leave no room for misinterpretation, because any ambiguity may lead to non-performance of contracts or legal disputes. More often than not, we would rather use the words “terminate”, “principle” and “confidentially” than adopt their colloquial counterparts that are “end”, “rule”, and “secret”. Terms in business contracts are universal in application, accurate in meanings and irreplaceable, and they also bear no personal feelings. Some technical terms such as “time of shipment” (装船日期), “ confirmed, irrevocable, transferable divisible letter of credit” (保兑的，不可撤销的，可转让的，可分割的信用证) and “Terms of Payment” (付款) are often employed in business contracts writing. Another vital characteristic of business contracts is the prevalence of modal verbs. Generally speaking, “Shall” is the commonly used modal verbs in English contract. It means the legal rights which should be enjoyed or responsibilities which should be shouldered by each party involved. So in contracts, “shall” doesn’t represent future intention. It conveys the meaning of objective requirements and has the similar meaning to the modal verb “must” in ordinary English. As to juxtaposition, it means coordination of synonyms or antonyms. The purpose of using juxtaposition is to restrict the sole meaning of the set clause and avoid misunderstanding. “For and in condition of”, “as and when”, “transferable or assignable”, “complaints and claims” and “charges, fees, costs, and expenses” are the frequently used juxtaposition. Besides, the syntactic features of business contracts are employing long sentences, passive voice and commonly used expressions.

5.2 The translation skills of Business Contract

There are specific translations criteria on general texts and that can also be a good guidance to business contract translation. Considering the special language characteristics, some scholars proposed two specific criteria of business contract translation: (1) Faithfulness and accuracy; (2) Expressiveness and smoothness (Hu, 2001:228). Between the two principles, the former one should be more important. Contract is an agreement of two parties and it affects the rights and responsibilities of both of them. When we misunderstand any word in business contract, some serious consequences may occur. So we often choose to keep the principle of “faithfulness and accuracy” over the principle of “expressiveness and smoothness”.

5.2.1 Proper use of professional and accurate words

As we have already mentioned, there are many formal vocabularies in business contracts, therefore in order to better translate English business contracts to Chinese, we should use the appropriate corresponding expressions. In Chinese language, single-character terms本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。