On Terminology Translation In Economics

The human society comes into a new century, and the international communication becomes increasingly frequent. Translation becomes more important during this change and development. China is in the fourth prime time of translation in the history, which contributes greatly to the development of Chinese economy. Since the reform and opening up to the outside world, lots of western classic economic books were translated into Chinese, which benefited the Chinese economic academic research and practice. However, in the translation practice, the translation of economic terminology has become a headache for translators. The inaccuracy, ambiguity, and improperness of economic terminology translation blemished the economic research in China and influenced indirectly to the development of Chinese economy. Therefore, it is necessary to standardize the translation of terminology in economics. This paper aims to contribute to this end. In the first section, the author introduces the status quo of translation in China and the chaotic situation of terminology translation. Then, in the second section, the author reviews the literature of terminology translation of foreign scholars and domestic scholars, including linguists and economists. In the third section, the author iterates the relevant theory and methodology of this paper. Nida's theory of equivalent translation is adopted as the guiding theory of this research, and comparative analysis is the research method. According to Nida, the dynamic/functional equivalence has priority over formal equivalence, and the nature of translation is to reproduce in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of source language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style. In the fourth section, which is the main body of this paper, the authoruses the above theory and method to analyze some important concepts in economics, for example, "economics of information", "game theory", "corporate governance", etc. After investigating the meaning of these concepts in both English and the translated Chinese and the response of the readers, the author proposes some modifications.In the last section, the author summarizes the important points of this paper and generates some principles for economic terminology translation, that is, accuracy, unique, and concise. In the end, the author suggests to set up an open, online and real time updating terminology database for Chinese translation, to facilitate the future translation.