A Research On The E-C Translation Of ESP Materials Based On Functionalist Trnslation Theories

English for Special Purposes(hereinafter referred to as ESP) refers to the English which varies itself in accordance with different tenor of discourse, field of discourse and mode of discourse. Translation of ESP materials constitutes an indispensable part of translation practice. As economy and sci-technology develop worldwide, it is increasingly important for engineers to translate in the field of civil engineering. As a type of ESP, civil engineering English attracts wide attention in ESP community because of its peculiar characteristics at lexical, syntactic and stylistic level.Many a research probed ESP from the perspective of “Equivalence” in the field of translation practice. However, “Equivalence” theory didn’t perform that well as scholars expect in civil engineering English materials, because of its own limitations on the practical level. Some scholars began to find other ways to improve the translation practice, when functionalist translation theories are coming into prominence. After a conscientious research on functionalist translation theories, the thesis holds that text typology and target text fulfill certain function in target culture. According to functionalist translation theories, translation is a process to create target text in the target culture as the original does in source culture, which does unnecessarily require perfect equivalence between source and target language. Functionalist translation theories seem to offer a new perspective to appreciate translation, and particularly, the translation in the field of civil engineering.In the process of translation, translators are not only puzzled by the difference of syntactic expression, but also be confronted with the difficulties in information reception, and in rewording of technical knowledge; any failure to convey the implied meaning and informative function of the source text may make target text hard to be understood. This thesis proposes that a function-oriented approach be adopted for the E-C translation of civil engineering materials, so to ensure the information of the target text to be equivalent to that of the original. After a description of morphological, syntactic and stylistic characteristics of civil engineering English and an analysis of the theoretical essentials of functionalist translation theories, this thesis intends to explore the possible application of functionalist translation theories to the translation practice of civil engineering materials from English into Chinese, proposing several translation techniques, such as literal translation, addition, abridgment.