Business English Translation From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

With the globalization of economy and the increasing frequency of international trades, business English is becoming more and more important. The development of business English attracts many scholars to study home and abroad, and they propose many theories and suggestive opinions on practical business English translation. Besides the theories and suggestive opinions, practical business translation needs to be guided by systematical translation theories. Among them, Eugene A. Nida is a prominent one, and his functional equivalence influences many scholars in the world now. Nida distinguishes "formal equivalence" and "functional equivalence" and informs the translators that the attention of translation should be changed from the relationship between original version and translated version to translated version and target language readers, and readers' response can be regarded as the true criterion of translation.This thesis discusses business English translation guided by functional equivalence theory. According to Nida's functional equivalence theory, the equivalence is "firstly in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style". The core of Nida's theory is that the response of original text readers is equal with the response of translated text readers. The two criteria of translation have the common features and the same effect, because if the source version and the target version are equal in meaning and style, then the response of the original message and the response of the translated message are the same or almost the same.Applying Nida's functional equivalence theory to business English is a new angle. The procedure in the thesis is: firstly, illustrates Nida's Functional Equivalence theory systematically; secondly, classifies business English and analyzes the semantic features and stylistic features in business English; finally, applies semantic equivalence and stylistic equivalence to word level, sentence level and text level to achieve translating equivalence. The author of the thesis hopes that the study can provide guidance on business English in theory and practical application.