Business Translation In A Functional View

With the development of economic globalization, business translation becomes more and more important in international trade. Business translation has its own features, which are different from those of other kinds of translations such as literary translation. This thesis is an attempt to employ functional theory to analyze business translation, which is deemed to be the theory most suitable and reasonable for business translation. Based on the analysis of functional theory, especially by taking the principle of function plus loyalty as a reasonable guidance, the thesis proposes two specific principles for business translation, that is, exactness and conciseness after a systematic analysis of stylistic features of business English is discussed at lexical, syntactic and textual levels. Then, it comes to the strategy for business translation, which is under the guidance of these three principles. In this thesis, free translation is regarded as a main strategy for business translation. Finally, with a considerable amount of examples, the thesis discusses some specific techniques that are suitable and useful for business translation.The thesis consists of five parts including the introduction and the conclusion.The introduction mainly explains the significance of business translation, the current studies of business translation in China and the outline of the thesis.As the theoretic basis of the thesis, the first chapter introduces the development of functional theory and its most influential theorists. A detailed discussion is given to functionalists in Germany. Besides, Newmark and Nida also proposed related theories from the aspect of language function and translation, which can, to some extent, guide business translation. The key part of this chapter is to reveal the advantage of functional theories when they are employed in businesstranslation. The reason why the principle of function plus loyalty could be thought as a reasonable one for business translation is discussed too.Chapter two touches briefly on the stylistic characteristics of business English. In an elementary view, business English is succinct and is mainly to offer information. And in detail, in lexical phase, there are four features: the exactness of the meanings of words, a lot of technical words and abbreviation terms, archaisms and those from other languages. As to syntactical level, there are three features: prominence of long sentences, frequent use of declarative sentences and a large amount of sentences with established expressions. Finally textually, business English is full of settled formats and its style is formal and concise.In chapter three, which is the most important part of the thesis, the principles of and strategy for business translation are analyzed. Two specific principles of business translation are presented in this chapter, that is, exactness and conciseness. With respect to translation strategy, free translation is the most widely used strategy in business translation. Combining with a great amount of examples, some frequently employed techniques such as the choice of words, adjustment and division are presented in the final part of this chapter, which can make business translation more effectively and accurately.The conclusion summarizes the whole thesis and suggests some requirements of business translators.