Fuzzy Language In Business Correspondence And Its Translation Strategies

Fuzziness of language, one of the most complicated and perplexing features of natural language, has evoked increasingly interest and endeavor from linguists and many other experts in various fields nowadays. Written business discourse, especially business correspondence, has always been requiring clear and concrete language, and fuzzy language is also an important part and common feature of it. However the study of fuzzy language in it has touched upon little. The present study has centered its attention on the analysis of fuzzy language in business correspondence with the purpose of exploring the application of fuzzy language in business correspondence and its possible strategies in translation.With detailed example, this thesis analyses the application of fuzzy languages in business correspondence and concludes that the employment of fuzzy language in business correspondence is indirectly motivated by politeness; however, the addresser's direct motivation or ultimate purpose is not only to communicate politeness but to make the addressee realize his communicative intentions, that is, to achieve contextual effect. As for the application of the relevance theory to the translation of fuzzy language, the author attempts to figure out some major strategies employed by translators in the ever-changing business letters: fuzzy expression to fuzzy expression, deletion or addition of fuzzy expression, accurate expression to fuzzy expression, conversion of word classes, and displacement of fuzzy expression. The choice of strategies should depend mainly on the communicative intentions of the source language author and of the translator. With the principle of relevance successful communication is thus guaranteed.The present thesis points out that the relevance theory provides a proper explanation for the frequent appearances of fuzzy languages in the business communication and their translation strategies. In view of the complexity of language fuzziness, considerable discussions and studies are of great necessity in future, which might cast new light on the research of fuzzy linguistics, pragmatics and translation.