Comments On English-Chinese Translation For Automotive Engineering Documentation

As a result of deeper and further reform and opening up to the outside world, especially after China's gaining access to the WTO, the Chinese government has been quickening its pace of opening the automotive market up to the outside world. The competition in the automotive market has inevitably become more violent.Confronted with such an emergent situation, auto manufacturers have come torealize the significance of cooperation With their counterparts both at home andabroad. Consequently, the exchanges of technical materials and business contracts in this area have become the tie among different auto organizations. Meanwhile, since more and more land vehicles such as cars, trucks and trailers are being imported from abroad, more and more materials, especially written materials in English, must be translated into Chinese. Moreover, numerous excellent English magazines, journals and papers on automotive industry are being circulated in China. All these factors suggest that faithful and correct translation of English for automotive engineering is essential for the development of automotive industry and therefore more people should master the English for automotive engineering so that they can accomplish the task of translating English materials related to the automotive field and supply such kinds of people as researchers, businessmen, salespersons, technicians and servicemen with updated information.Compared with other domains of language, English for automotive engineering has its own characteristics. It would be very hard for a translator to satisfactorily translate the English for automotive engineering into Chinese if the translator fails to bear in mind the distinctive features of the source language. There are so many translators who are familiar with the working principles and the construction of automotive as well as English. They show great zest in translation. However, in the process of English translation, they feel puzzled and lost in translation. The main reason is believed that so many translators have not acquired the special rules of English for automotive engineering.In this thesis, the author tries to analyze the specific aspects of English for automotive engineering and offers his comments on the English-Chinese translation of automotive engineering documentation in order to contribute to the translation theory and practice concerning English-Chinese translation for automotive engineering.This thesis is composed of five chapters: Chapter one (General Introduction to Language) provides three main functions of language: the informative function, the expressive function and the vocative function. Chapter two (General Introduction to Translation) presents some major knowledge of translation such as the definition of translation, the nature of translation, the procedure of translation, the criteria of translation and so on and so forth. Chapter three plays a leading role in the thesis. In this chapter, four characteristics of English for automotive engineering— Stylistic characteristics of English for automotive engineering, the lexical characteristics of English for automotive engineering, the semantic characteristics of technical terms and the syntactic characteristics of English for automotive engineering are discussed. Chapter four deals with some translation techniques in English-Chinese translation for automotive engineering. Chapter five describes common mistakes and defects frequently occurred in English-Chinese translation.