Some problems encountered by the 4th year english students at vinh university when translating vietnamese sales contract into english equivalents

VINH UNIVERSITY
FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT
**********

LƯƠNG THỊ HUYỀN TRANG

SOME PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED BY THE 4TH YEAR
ENGLISH STUDENTS AT VINH UNIVERSITY WHEN
TRANSLATING VIETNAMESE SALES CONTRACT INTO
ENGLISH EQUIVALENTS
(MỘT SỐ KHÓ KHĂN CỦA SINH VIÊN TIẾNG ANH NĂM THỨ TƯ
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC VINH KHI DỊCH HỢP ĐỒNG THƯƠNG MẠI TIẾNG
VIỆT SANG TIẾNG ANH)

GRADUATION THESIS
Field : Linguistics

Vinh – 2011


VINH UNIVERSITY
FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT
**********

SOME PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED BY THE 4TH
YEAR ENGLISH STUDENTS AT VINH UNIVERSITY
WHEN TRANSLATING VIETNAMESE SALES
CONTRACT INTO ENGLISH EQUIVALENTS
(MỘT SỐ KHÓ KHĂN CỦA SINH VIÊN TIẾNG ANH NĂM THỨ TƯ
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC VINH KHI DỊCH HỢP ĐỒNG THƯƠNG MẠI TIẾNG
VIỆT SANG TIẾNG ANH)

GRADUATION THESIS
Field : Linguistics

Student:
Lương Thị Huyền Trang, K48B
Supervisor: Lê Thị Thúy Hà, M.A

Vinh – 2011

Acknowledgements


For the completion of this work, I have been received invaluable contributions
from many people. First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my
supervisor, M.A Le Thi Thuy Ha for her absolutely indispensable assistance, useful
suggestions, and critical comment, step by step guiding me during my study paper.
Without her help, my work would not have been complete. I owned her a debt of
gratitude that can not be measured.
My special words of thanks to Dean and Leading Board of Foreign Languages
Department, who gave me opportunities to study and do my thesis paper.
I am also grateful to all other teachers at the Foreign Languages Department for
all their enthusiasm and suggestions which help me overcome difficulties in the process
of my study.
In addition, I am greatly thanks to the people who work in Department of
Planning and Investment and Department of Industry and Commercial for giving me
documents and invaluable conditions while the research was being done.
As always I wish to express my special thanks to students from K48B1, K48B2 for
their assistance and cooperation.
My warmest thanks to members of my family for their encouragement, support to

me to fulfill this thesis.
Finally, I am aware that without the advice and support, my project is far from
complete. Thus, my sole responsibility for any inadequacies and shortcomings that the
thesis may be considered to have.

Vinh, May 8th, 2011.
Luong Thi Huyen Trang

i

Abstract


This study is an investigation into sales contracts translation strategies of students
of Foreign Languages Department in Vinh University. It purposes to find out students’
mistakes and difficulties when translating Sales Contracts, then suggest guides and
solution for them. Thus, I has stimulated the author in doing the study. In chapter 1, the
author gave the definition, profits, features of translation, Sales Contracts and Discourse
analysis. In chapter 2, giving the description of the survey, result of the data, analysing
students problems, causes of these problems in chapter 2. Suggesting solutions will be
presented in chapter 3. Finally, some implications to English teaching and translating
are provided in the hope that readers will benenfit from it.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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ABSTRACT
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I - INTRODUCTION
1. Justification of the Study
2. Aims and Objective of the Study.
3. Methods of the Study
4. Scope of the Study.
5. Format of the Study
PART II - CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1. Translation
1.1 What is translation?
1.2 Why is Translation?
1.3 Process of translating
1.3.1 The Approach
1.3.2 The unit of translation
1.4 Types of Translation
1.4.1 Form based
1.4.2 Meaning based
1.5 Translation method
1.5.1 Word for word Translation
1.5.2 Literal Translation
1.5.3 Faithful Translation
1.5.4 Semantic Translation
1.5.5 Adaptation
1.5.6 Free Translation
1.5.7 Idiomatic Translation

1.5.8 Communicative Translation
1.6 Translation equivalence
2. Sales Contracts
2.1 What is a Sales Contract?
2.2 Why are Sales Contracts made?
2.3 Register
2.3.1 What is register?
2.3.2 The parameters of register
2.3.3 Use of grammar
2.4.Theme and rheme
3. Discourse Analysis
3.1 Written discourse
3.2 Discourse context
3.3 Cohesive devices
3.3.1 Reference
3.3.2 Ellipsis
3.3.3 Substitution

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3.3.4 Conjunction
3.3.5 Lexical cohesion

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CHAPTER 2 THE STUDY
1.1 Overview of the Study
1.2 Description of the survey and the test
1.3 Research setting
1.4 Description of Subject
1.5 Data Instrument
1.6 Procedure
2. Analysis of the data
2.1 Result of the survey
2.2.Result of the Translation test
2.2.1 Words using
2.2.2 Language style
2.2.3 Sentence Structures
2.2.4 Grammar choice
CHAPTER 3 - SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR TRANSLATING PRACTICE
3.1. Some suggestion for translating Words and Phrases
3.2 Some suggestion for translating Structures and using Grammar
3.2.1 Suggestions for Structures
3.2.2 Suggestions for Grammar
3.3 Some suggestions for using Language style
3.4 Good knowledge of Forms and Characteristics of Sales contract
both Source Language and Target Ones
PART III – CONCLUSION

1. Recapitulation and Implications
2. Suggestions for further Studies
REFERENCES
APPENDIX

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Part I: introduction

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1. Justification of the Study
Legal acts appeared long ago in the history of human beings. Modern law code was
written several recent decades ago. Nowadays, more and more law codes have been
promulgated. Thus, research on the language of legal acts is very necessary. It is not easy
to understand legal documents structurally and linguistically because its communicative
purposes differ from the ordinary genres.
Sales contracts are a form of written documents used as a mean to bind business
partners to legal obligations. It is no exaggeration to say that sales contracts can lead to the
success of failure of a company. Many bitter lessons have been drawn from the fact that a
number of Vietnamese companies have been driven to unfavorable situations due to poor
translation or inexperienced contract makers’ ignorance. Therefore, sales contract
translation has played an important role in the success of the economy.
Translation in general and sales contract translation in particular, in fact, is one of
the most difficult and challenging jobs. It requires a translator not only good knowledge of
topic issue but also other things such as background knowledge, culture of target
community and purposes of translation etc. Translations will be considered to fail if the
readership misunderstands, disagrees or feels strange. Then it is essential for translators
and English lecturers to have good knowledge of contract making and translation so that
we can avoid failures and mistakes.
The author, herself, a student of foreign languages department found some
difficulties and challenges when dealing with sales contract translation. Her ambition in
this study is only to identify some difficulties that students may have and to help them
overcome these difficulties. Hopefully, the study is a contribution to English teaching and
learning, and a good source of reference for those who are interested in the area.

2. Aims and Objectives of the Study
2.1 Aims of the Study
Originating from the above reasons, this graduation paper is aimed at:

- Firstly, searching the translation theory and giving clearly the advantages of
translation
1
- Secondly, applying translation methods
- Thirdly, clarifying the special features and languages used in English Sales
contracts to students


- Fourthly, analyzing the structure of English Sale Contracts in terms of discourse
analysis
- In addition, investigate the difficulties which the third year student of Foreign
Languages Department in Vinh University face in translating Sales contracts.
- Most importantly, identifying some some implications in the hope of helping
learners of English to improve their competence to analyse a contract and translate good
contracts

2.2 Objectives of the Study
This study aims at studying:
-

The Importance of Sales Contracts in business.

-

Problems which the students often get in translating Sales Contracts

-

Causes of these problems

-

Awareness of students in practicing translation

-

Ability of the the students in translating Sales Contracts

3. Methods of the Study
First of all, the author makes a detail plan of procedure. Then collecting Sales
contracts, after that studying materials, documents which related to the topic. Next, the
author classifies grammatical and linguistic materials concerning to discourse features.
The next is analyzing all the information selected from English Sales Contracts
and Vietnamese Sales Contracts. Furthermore, the author gets the contribution from the
supervisor, lecturer and classmates. The author makes hypothesis and questions for the
problem, collecting data to answer the hypothesis. Then the author defines the
participants, time and place to do research.
Moreover, the author uses both qualitative and quantitative research to solve the
problem. Because the topic request opinions and also figures. In qualitative, the author
uses open-ended questions, and closed- ended questions for quantitative research. Then
the author makes a survey to get figures and opinions.
Finally, the information obtained will be dealt with, analyzed in order to reach
2
some conclusions on the subject - matter under investigation, and necessary
comments should be accordingly made.

4. Scope of the Study


Within the scope of this thesis, a full catalogue of Sales Contracts feature,

discourse features of English is too broad. It seems impossible to go deep into all of them
due to the time limitation, resource constrains. Thus, this paper wishes to touch upon
some prominent features of translation, discourse and Sales Contracts with the following
concerns:
Firstly, the theoretical scope of the Study mainly focuses on Translation, Sales
Contracts, Discourse analysis, Discourse structure.
Secondly, the practical scope of the Study is limited to written Sales contracts and
the focus of data analysis is cohesive devices, coherence and some register characteristics
of Sales Contracts.
In short, we present some findings from the Study. It is hoped that this study will
be of some use to teaching and learning English process. And due to the time limitation,
we only focus on translation Sales Contracts from Vietnamese into English equivalents.

5. Format of the Study
The Study includes three main parts.
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Contents
Chapter 1: Theoretical background.
Chapter 2: An analysis of the structure of English Sales Contracts
Chapter 3: The Study
Part 3: Conclusion

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Part ii: Investigation
Chapter 1: Theoretical background
1. Translation
1.1 What is Translation?
It is said that “ Translation is an art and a science”. It deals with language in use
rather than language as a system. The term “translation” itself can refer to 2 meanings: it

can be the product (the text that is translated) or the process (the act of producing
translation, another way to say translating). Traditionally, translation is the phenomenon
which is considered an “art”. However, recently it is accessed from a more technical
point of view by a number of linguists.
Cart Ford (1965) defines translation as the replacement of textual material in one
language (source language) by equivalent textual material in another language (target
language)
Marlone (1988) claims that “ translation is the expression in another language (or
target language) of what has been expressed in another source language preserving
semantic and stylistic equivalence”
Whereas Bell (1991) holds that translation is the “tranformation of a text originally
in one language in to an equivalent text is a different language retaining, as far as
possible, the content of the message, and the formal features and the roles of the original
text”.
According to the Merrian Webster dictionary (1974):
“Translation consists of changing from one state or form to another, to turn into one
own or another language”.
As mentioned above, translation is basically a change of form. The form of a
language refers to the actual words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc. The forms are
referred to as the “surface structure” of a language. Translators replace the form of the
source language by the form of the target language.
Translation, aims at equivalence between the source language and the target
language in terms of lexical, grammatical, structure, context of communication and
4

structure identity. To this end, translator must use the lexicon, grammatical structure of
the target language in an appropriate way in respect of communicative and cultural
context to rebuild the same meaning.

According to Wilhelm K. Weber in “Training Translators and Conference
Interpreters”: Translation is the transposition of a text written in a source language into a
target language. The translated version must be absolutely accurate in meaning contain


all nuances of the original and must be written in clear elegant language that can be easily
understood by the reader.
Needless to say, punctuation, spelling and grammar must be flawless. In addition,
translators have at their disposal dictionaries and reference material in both language.
However, it must be acknowledged that this definitions is mostly for the sake of
translation theory only. Since in practice, it is very rarely to find translation versions that
can be “absolutely accurate” in meaning, contain all nuances of the original and be easily
understood by readers. People are different in all aspects so the message they received
may not be identical from each other. Therefore, they may not be the same as the writer’s
messages.
Bui Tien Bao(1999:9) claimed that Translation is rendering a written text into
another language in the way that the author intended the text.
Translators are concerned with the written word. They render written texts from one
language into another. Translators are required to undertake assignments, which range
from simple items, such as birth certificates and driving licences, to more complex
written material, such as articles in specialised professional journals, business contracts
and legal documents.
It is noticeable that ideas on translation are diversified and the concept and
translation is complicated indeed. However, these definitions, stemming at different times
share common features: translation is the action of translation from source language to
target language in which meaning is preserved. That means has to have equivalent
characteristic.

1.2 Why is Translation?
Even with the most up-to-date and sophisticated communication system we can

never know how many languages man uses today in the world, let alone how many
5
languages man has used during the course of his development. Some sources say there
are some two or three thousand languages being used in the world. But some others say
number may be as large as eight thousands. What a habit man has, that of speaking
different tongues! And thus he offers himself difficulties and obstacles.
Since communication within only one speech community is not enough, certainly
there has a great number of times arisen a situation in which some individuals are unable


to understand the words or expressions of some others. This phenomenon creates a
barrier to understanding whenever man tries to communicate across a great distance of
space or across a great interval of time. Something has to be done to overcome this
restriction. One way to cope with the restriction is for individuals to know the foreign
language. But this is not the final solution because apparently no individual in the world
can know all the languages in use. The polyglotest so far knows only about twenty five
languages, and still people want to read what other people say. Translation may be
considered as the most universally accepted solution for surmounting the obstacle. And
thus there is a need for professional translatiors and interpreters.

1.3 Process of Translating
1.3.1 The Approach
There are two approaches of translating:
- Starting translating sentence by sentence, for say the first paragraph or chapter, to
get the feel and the feeling tone of the text, and then deliberately sit back, review the
position, and read the rest of the SL text;
- Read the whole text two or three times, and find the intention, register; tone,
mark the difficult words and passagea and start translating only when have taken the
bearings.
Translating process begins with choosing a method of approach. When

translating, we translate with four levels in mind: the SL text level, the referential level,
the cohesive level, and the level of naturalness.
1.3.2 The unit of translation
The unit of translation can vary. It is what you are translating at that moment. It
can range from a word, a sentence to a paragraph or whole passage.
However, normally you translate sentence by sentence, running the risk of not
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paying enough attention to the sentences joins. If the translation of a sentence has no
problem, it is based firmly on literal translation. Since the sentence is the basic unit of
thought, presenting an object and what it does, is, or is affected by, so the sentence is
your common unit of translation. In each sentence, you go to clause, both finite and nonfinite. Within the clause, you may take next the two obviously cohesive types of
collocations, adjective-plus-noun or verb-plus-object, or the various groups that are less


context-bound.

1.4 Types of translation
As presented earlier, translation in the change of form while the meaning is
remained. Accordingly, there are two main types of translation basing on form and
meaning; the form based one and the meaning based one. (Larson, 1984)
1.4.1 Form based
Form based translation is known as literal translation. It attempts to follow the
form of the source language text. When translating, translators must use lexicon,
grammatical structure of the target language to replace those of the source language
(Larson, 1984)
1.4.2 Meaning based
Brian G Rucheck in ten Concepts Students Should Understood Prior to Enrolling
in a University Translation or Interpretation Class said, “One of the main goals for
translators is to accurately communicative meaning”.

He quoted massoud’s recommendation (1988) that translators should ask and keep
in mind two basic questions about the source language message:
1 What does it mean?
2 How should it be said in the new (other) language?
Good translators do not try to reproduce the formal order of words and phrases nor
do they try to find one sets of verbal correspondence. What they do aim at is a faithful
reproduction of the original so that the meaning of the message and its spirit may be
satisfactorily communicated. Lason (1984) claimed, “Meaning based translations or
idiomatic translations make every effort to communicate to text receivers, the meaning of
the source language text in the natural forms of the target language”.
In fact, to have a good translation version, a translator should combine both of meaning
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based one and form based one.

1.5 Translation method
Peter Newmark (1988) restates that the central problem of translating has always
been whether to translate literally of freely. There were a lot of arguments being going on
from the first century. However, Newmark thinks that those was theoretical, the purpose
of translation, the nature of treadership, the type of text was not discussed. Too often,


write, translator and reader were implicilty identified with each other. Now the context
has changed and he provides it in the form of a flatterned V- diagram like below
SL emphasis

TL emphasis

Word for word translation

Adaptation

Literal translation

Free translation

Faithful translation

Idiomatic translation

Semantic translation

Communicative translation
(Newmark 1988)

1.5.1 Word for word translation
This is often demonstrated as interlinear translation, with the target language
immediately below the source language words. The source language word-order is
preserved and the words translated singly by their most common meanings out of context.
Cultural words translated literally. The main use of word-for-word translation is either to
understand the mechanics of the source language or to construe a difficult text as pretranslation process.
1.5.2 Literal translation
The source language grammatical constructions are converted to their nearest
target language equivalent but the lexical words are again translated singly, out of
context. As a pre-translation process, this indicates the problems to be solved.
1.5.3 Faithful translation
A faithful translation attempts to reproduce the precise contextual meaning of the
original within the constrains of the target language grammatical structure. It “transfer”
cultural words and preserves the degree of grammatical and lexical “abnormality”
(deviation from source language norms) in the translation. It attempts to be completely
8

faithful to the intentions and the text-realization of the source language writer.
1.5.4 Semantic translation
Differs from “faithful translation” only in as far as it must take more account of
aesthetic value of the source language text, compromising on meaning where appropriate
so that no assonance, word play or repetition jars in the finished versions. Further it may


translate less important culturally neutral third of functional terms but not by cultural
equivalents and it may make other small concessions to the readerships.
1.5.5 Adaptation
This is the “freest” form of translation. It is used mainly for plays (comedies) and
poetry; the themes, characters, plots are usually preserved, the source language culture
converted to the target language culture and the text rewritten. The deplorable practice of
having a play or poem literally translated and then rewritten by an established dramatist
or poet has produced many poor adaptations, but other adaptations have “ rescued period
plays”.
1.5.6 Free translation
Reproduces the matter without the manner, or the content without the form of the
original. Usually, it is a paraphrase much longer than the original, a so-called
“intralingual translation”, not translation at all.
1.5.7 Idiomatic translation
Reproduces the message of the original but tends to distort nuances of meaning by
preferring colloquialism and idioms where these do not exist in the original.
1.5.8 Communicative translation.
Attempts to render the exact contextual meaning of the original in such a way that
both content and language are readily acceptable and comprehension to the readership.
Commenting in this method, Newmark said that only semantic and communicative
translation fullfil the two mains of translation, which are first: accuracy and second,
economy. In general, a semantic translation is written at the author’s linguistic level, a
communicative at the readership’s. semantic translation is used for “expressive” texts,

communicative for “informative” and “vocative” texts.

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1.6 Translation equivalence
Central to the translation is the concept of equivalence. It is undeniable that
translation equivalence is the central concept of translation. Newmark (1988) states:
“the over purpose of any translation should be to achieve equivalent effect. i.e to produce
the same effect (or one as close as possible) on the readership of the translation as was


obtained on the readership of the original theory”. However, it is still a controversial one
and acquires a lot of attempts. There are a lot of approaches to this problem and it differs
ordinarily.
Nida (1964) distinguishes two primary types of equivalence
- Formal equivalence: pays attention to the message itself, in both form and

content. This orientation focuses on the message being in conceptor language should
match as closely as possible the different elements in the source language.
- Dynamic equivalence: aims at complete naturalness of expression and tries to
relate the receptor relevant within the context of his own culture. According to this
orientation, translation is based upon the principle of equivalence effect.
Whereas Koller (1979) describes five different types of equivalence
- Denotative equivalence: is related to equivalence of extralingguistic content of
a text
- Connotative equivalence: is related to lexical choices, especially between near
synonym. This type of equivalence is refered to as “stylistic equivalence”.
- Text-normative equivalnece (communicative equivalence) is related towards the
receiver of the text or message. This is completely coincided with nida’s dynamic
equivalence.

- Formal equivalence: is related to the form and aesthetic of the text, includes
word plays and the individual stylistic features of the source text. It is in some sources
referred to as “ expressive equivalence”.
Baker (1992) also provides an interesting point of view when discussing the notion
of equivalence specifically as follows:
- Grammatical equivalence: refers to the diversity of grammatical categories
across languages. She notes that grammatical rules may vary across language and this
may pose some problems when finding a direct equivalence in the target language.
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Especially, problems concentrate on number, tense, aspect, voice, person and gender.
- Textual equivalence: refer to equivalence between a source language text and a
target language text in terms of information and cohesion. Texture is very important as it
provides useful guidelines for the comprehension and analysis of the source text which


can help translator in his/her attempt to produce a cohesive and coherent text for the
target audience.
- Pragmatic equivalence: refers to implicatures and strategies of avoidance
during the translation process. Translator’s duty in this field is to work out implied
meanings in order to get source text message across.
To sum up, the notion of equivalence is still a problematic and controversial area
in the aspect of translation theory. It is helpful to think that among patterns of
equivalence, some are practical and can be applied to certain kind of texts, these are
practical and can also be applied to other ones.

2. Sales Contracts
2.1 What is a contract?
A contract is a legally enforceable promise or set of promise. However, not all
promises are contracts. Over the years, the law courts developed a number of
requirements that a promise had to meet before it would be considered a contract.

According to James Barnes (2000:58) “ A contract is an agreement (an offer and an
acceptance) voluntarily entered into by parties having capacity to contract to do a legal
act or acts”. In addition to these elements, the courts required written evidence of some
kinds of contracts.

2.2 Why are contracts made?
Contracts are probably a necessary device in many kinds of market economy
where goods and services are exchanged by people acting in their own interest. People
might not enter into agreements that call for some future performance unless they know
some means exist (the law) to force either people to honor their promises.
For example, a small business might be afraid to supply its goods to a large
corporation in exchange for the corporations promise to pay for them next month unless
the business knows it could have outside help to force the corporation to pay. Similarly, a
weak person might not be willing to pay a strong person today for goods to be delivered
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next week unless the weak person knows there is outside help available to enforce the
return of the money if the goods are not delivered, or of the goods delivered are not what
was agreed to.
It is also true that it would probably be impossible to have an industrialized market
economy without contracts. A manufacturer would be unable to do the kind of planning


necessary to run a business if it could not rely on agreements with suppliers to furnish the
raw materials needed to make its products. Similarly, a manufacturer might not be willing
to commit itself to buy raw materials or hire employees it could not rely on buyers’
promises to buy its products.

2.3 Register
2.3.1 What is register?
Register is very important in contracts. There are many different opinions about

register or functional styles.
According to Halliday and Hasan (1976) register is defined as : “the linguistic
features which are typically associated with a configuration of situational features- with
particular values of the field, mode, tenor- constitute a register”.
For Hudson (1980) the term “register” is widely used in socio-linguistics to refer
to “varieties according to use” or in other words, register shows what you are doing.
In short, register is linguistic varieties that are closed linked to occupation,
profession, topics, etc. It is tied to the selection of words in discourse.

2.3.2 The parameters of register.
There are three parameters of register. They are: Field, Mode, and Tenor.
* Field: refers to the purpose and subject matter of the discourse, which is what the
speaker talks about.
* Mode: is about the channels or the ways by which discourse is conducted. Mode is
concerned with what part of language is playing, what it is that the participants are
expecting the language to do for them in that situation, the symbolic organization of the
text, the status that is has, and its function in the context.
* Tenor: is concerned with the interpersonal relations between the participants. It refers
to who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, their statuses and roles.

2.3.3 Use of grammar
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* Modality
Lexical instruments expressing modality play an important part in establishing
rights and duties in contracts. In terms of linguistics, this task is performed by the use of
modal verbs such as: will, shall, should, may, must…
For example: “…The claim for quantity should be put forward within 15days after


commodity’s arrival at port of destination…”

* Use of passive voice and active voice
English contract is rich in passive verbs.
Passive:“…quality

and

quantity

certificates

must

be

issued

by

SGS/VINACONTROL/COTECNA or other equal organization..”
Active: “…this contract comes into effect from signing date and any amendment and/or
additional clause to these conditions…”
* The clause pattern in English Sale Contract:
Long sentences quickly become confusing in English, especially in the
international arena, drafter must know, and work within, the limits of basis English clause
structure when combining ideas into longer sentence:
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An oversize vocabulary with blurred distinctions of meaning.

-

A simplified grammatical structure with usage and idiom replacing ‘logical’
rules.
+ main clause plus main clause
+ main clause plus 1 subordinate clause
+ the daisy-chain
+ main clause between subordinate clause

* Use of vocabulary
- archaic words : hereafter, hereunder, thereof, therein…
- technical words: contractor, contract, foreigner currency…

2.4 Theme- Rheme
Theme-rheme is a general structure in every language. Theme is the usually
expressed by the left-most constituent of the sentence, and it is what the speakers
nominates as the subject of what he will speak about later in the rheme. Rheme is the
information about the rheme.
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For example: “ In case quality, quantity or specification of the commodity is not
accordance with the stipulation in the contract, except the responsibilities of insurance
company and shipping agency, the SELLER must accept the claim from the BUYER…”

3 Discourse Analysis
3.1 Written discourse


In written language an extensive set of metalingual markers exists to mark
relationships between clauses (that clause, when and while, besides, moreover, however).
Written language rather heavily premodified noun phrases occur frequently. Whereas
written language sentences are generally structured in subject-predicate form, in spoken

language it is quite common to find what Givon (1979) calls topic-comment structure.
From all above, we can realized that written language is very specific, exact and coherent.
3.2 Discourse context
Context is an important factor in discourse analysis. There is a dialectical
relationship between discourses as much as the discourse creates the context. For some
scholars, context seems just to be minimal stretch of language that helps to understand
what is written or spoken. It involves non-linguistics factors that contribute and constrain
our interpretation of discourse.
3.3 Cohesive devices
There are five major transition devices: reference, substitution, ellipsis,
conjunction and lexical cohesion.
3.3.1 Reference
According to Halliday

and Hasan (1976), there are two kinds of reference:

exophora and endophora. Endophora consists of anaphoric and cataphoric. These two
types of references are performed through instructing readers to consult back to the
former part of the contract (anaphoric reference) or to the latter part of the contract
(cataphoric reference).
3.3.2 Ellipsis
Ellipsis can be defined as the omission of certain elements, which have been
mentioned in the preceding sentence. Ellipsis can be studied in terms of nominal ellipsis,
verbal ellipsis and clausal ellipsis.
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3.3.3 Substitution
Substitution is simply defined as the replacement of an expression by another in
the text. It is used to avoid repetition in case the writer or the speaker does not want to
use the same word or phrase many times without implication. Most of substitutes are
proform within sentences.

Substitution can also be classified into three: norminal substitution, verbal