On Translations Of Business Letters Under The Politeness Principle

With the commercial competitions becoming much fiercer, one polite business letter plays more and more important role in business communications. A British linguist, Geoffrey Leech, offers politeness principle on the basis of face theories from Lakoff, Goffman, Brown & Levinson and the cooperative principle from Grice. Chinese linguist, Gu Yueguo, also proposes his own politeness principle. Their politeness principles fully reflect in Chinese-English and English-Chinese translations of business letters, guide Chinese-English and English-Chinese translations of business letters effectively. The objective of the analysis is to compare and contrast Chinese-English translations under Leech's politeness maxims with English-Chinese translations under Gu Yueguo's maxims. It will examine how Chinese-English translations of business letters reflect Leech's maxims and English-Chinese translations of business letters reflect Gu Yueguo's maxims. The analysis will remind people to notice the problems in Chinese-English and English-Chinese translations of business letters, will guide translations and teaching research, and will promote the business communications.The objects of the analysis are the typical examples of Chinese-English and English-Chinese business translations from seven important books of business letters. Through carefully researching into those examples, the analysis is divided into six parts. The first part introduces the background, the importance of politeness principle in the translations of business letters and the objective of the analysis. The second part includes the research of historical, present, home and abroad scholars into the politeness principle. The third part, the fourth part and the fifth part include Chinese-English translations under Leech's politeness maxims of the politeness principle, English-Chinese translations under Gu Yueguo's politeness maxims of the politeness principle and the similarities and differences of Chinese-English translations under Leech's politeness maxims of the politeness principle and English-Chinese translations under Gu Yueguo's politeness maxims of the politeness principle. The last part is the summary and the limitations of the analysis.