A Study Of The Translation Of Practical Writings From The Perspective Of The Theory Of Function And Loyalty

Practical writing is a special style, covering nearly all the genres other than literature, and being so widely used for communication in the walks of life. Its main function is to inform the readership of information about the world.With translation research going deeper and deeper, it is commonly agreed that functional approaches should be the correct path for the translation of practical writings. The paper chooses Nord's theory of function plus loyalty as the theoretical framework for translation study. Through comparison with Nida's theory of functional equivalence and Newmark's theory about semantic translation and communicative translation, the paper holds that Nord's theory is a more powerful guide for the E-C or C-E translation of practical writings.The contributions of the theory to translation studies include three aspects. Firstly, it proposes that most texts can be classified into three types according to the main textual function, informative, expressive and appellative. Secondly, it brings forward two translation strategies, documentary translation and instrumental translation for the translation of texts of different functions. Finally, it argues that translation should be target-reader-oriented on the condition that the target text does not conflict with the intention and the content of the source text.Among the practical writings to be studied in the paper, there are government documentation, political speeches, texts of science and technology, legal documentation, business documentation, instructions, publicity materials on tourism and business advertisements.According to the paper, texts of science and technology, legal documentation, business documentation and instructions are of the informative type, focusing on information transfer, government documentation and political speeches are expressive, emphasizing the statement of the author's attitude towards objects or phenomena in the world, while publicity materials on tourism and business advertisements are appellative, with the function of eliciting the readers'response and desire to act in an intended way. The paper then proposes at a macro-level some translation approaches for the texts of each of the three types, finding that the approaches suggested for the translation of the informative and appellative texts are under the strategy of equifunctional instrumental translation, while the approaches proposed for the translation of the expressive texts belong either to documentary or hetero-functional instrumental translation. It is therefore concluded that the translation of practical writings should follow the functional approach, for which the theory of function plus loyalty proves a very valuable guiding principle.