Politeness Equivalence And Its Translation Strategies In Translating Business Letters

With the development of globalization, more communication between different cultures is needed. Translation, therefore, plays a more important role in cross-cultural communication. Moreover, translation study does not remain its focus on literary translation any longer. Translation study from the angle of linguistics has aroused intense interests among researchers and new theories in this respect have been proposed to give guidance to the translation practice, among which pragmatic translation is now greatly celebrated.Regarding the differences between Chinese and English politeness, especially the differences manifested in the context of business, this thesis intends to analyze how to achieve politeness equivalence in translating a Chinese business letter into a qualified English version. After a close analysis on the characteristics of business letter translation, the thesis author, probing into some specific examples related to politeness translation in business letters, puts forward some translation strategies so as to make the politeness embodied in the original letter transferred to the target to the same degree and thus to elicit the same response from target readers as that from the original readers, which is exceptionally expected in Nida's functional equivalence.Politeness equivalence is an important part of functional equivalence. It should also be taken as a norm to measure against whether the translation has realized its functional equivalence. This is exceptionally demanded in business letter translation.Politeness strategies act as a function of smoothening interpersonal communication in business activities. Politeness equivalence has great significance in translating business letters.