Polysystem And Its Application To Business Translation

What kind of translations can be taken as acceptable ones has always been a problem. Some have established different theories about this from different aspects, say, linguistic, sociolinguistic, communicative, hermeneutic, semiotic, Marxist, transformational, and even gender, to mention only a few. But translation involves many factors. Itamar Even-Zohar's Polysystem hypothesis suggests that there is a Polysystem and translated literature is an indispensable part of it. He also gave a scheme of literary system. This hypothesis helps translators and translation students to view translation from a new perspective. The factors, especially the socio-cultural ones, are emphasized for its influence on translation. In this paper we try to apply this hypothesis to Business English. Traditionally viewed as one type of special English, business English, too, can be considered as a system. Business English develops rapidly with globalization and has its own characteristics which will be analyzed in the paper. In the past, there are arguments about whether we should have a universal criterion for business translation or to treat different business English types respectively with different and complicated strategies. We try to treat business English from the point of Polysystem hypothesis and come to a new understanding of business English and business translation as well.