According to the customs,by the end of 2011,the whole value of Chinese foreign trade is two thousand nine hundred and ninety four billion dollars,by the end of 2009,5 percents of the accounts of Chinese foreign trade with a value of fifty hundred billion dollars are unpaid.Most of the financial loss are caused by wrong translation of documents.The letter of credit is the most important way of payment in the international trade,so great attention should be paid to the translation of this type of document.Until now,the study against the translation of the letter of credit is scant.This paper will apply the skopos theory put forward by Hans Vermeer and developed in Germany in the late 1970s to guide the translation practice of the letter of credit.
