Fuzziness In Business Correspondence And Its Translation Strategies

Fuzziness is one of the basic properties that exist inevitably in natural language system. It is being widely employed in human communication activities. In recent years, linguists and researchers from both China and abroad have carried out lots of systematic researches from different perspectives of philosophical, cognitive, semantic and pragmatic.According to the traditional 7Cs Principle, clear and precise language should be used and emphasized in business correspondence in order to avoid misunderstanding and dispute. However, practical application and researches indicate that fuzziness is still being employed in such a language with clarity and preciseness. In previous studies, both of fuzziness and business correspondence have been discussed respectively, but have seldom been combined together for research, especially touched less on fuzziness in business correspondence and its E-C translation at the same time. This thesis, with the intention that it may serve a proper perspective for the study of fuzziness in business correspondence, tries to answer three research questions raised at the beginning part which are:1) why is fuzzy language applied in business correspondence; 2) what function does fuzziness have in business correspondence and 3) what kind of translation strategies for fuzziness should we master by applying Relevance Theory to translation.After pointing out the frequent and inevitable existence of fuzziness in business correspondence and analyzing the examples from collected letters, this study proves that proper employment of fuzziness in business correspondence would help to realize the addressers'communicative intentions. Then it discusses in detail some possible translation methods under the guidance of Relevance Theory in order to ensure a successful business communication between English and Chinese through business correspondence. Therefore, it enriches the research on fuzziness in business correspondence and contributes to the studies in the employment of fuzzy language.This thesis first introduces the present study as a whole, including origin of the study, the objectives and significance of the study and the organization of the thesis. Then it reviews the literature on fuzziness both abroad and in China in Chapter Two, including a historical review on language fuzziness, definitions of language fuzziness, comparison among fuzziness, vagueness and ambiguity and the previous studies on fuzziness in business correspondence.In the third chapter, it mainly explores the four positive functions of fuzziness in business correspondence for helping addressers realize their communicative intentions, namely increasing the flexibility of business English language, enhancing the objectivity and appropriateness of business language, making the business correspondence more persuasive and business letters more polite and courteous. The ultimate goal is to achieve business success by realizing the addressers' communicative goals. Then it also summarizes the negative effects caused by improper use of fuzzy language in business correspondence.Chapter four begins with the introduction of the relationship between Relevance Theory and translation of fuzziness, and then some possible and effective translation strategies for fuzziness are put forward based on the Relevance Theory. They are fuzziness to fuzziness, accuracy to fuzziness, addition, omission and conversion of word classes.At last, Chapter five concludes the major findings of the thesis, implications and limitations of the study and also gives some suggestions for future research on this topic.The major findings of this thesis are expected to guide business people to use fuzziness flexibly, properly thus effectively in achieving successful business communication, to lead us to think and study fuzziness from a different angle, and do similar researches in other related fields, to help people better translate fuzziness in business correspondence, and to some degree cast some enlightenment on business English teaching.