Aesthetical Consideration To The Translation Of Product Directions

With the rapid growth of global economic and trade exchanges, import and export of commodities are becoming more and more frequent, and many kinds of products are distributed to different countries. Meanwhile, product directions, which inform the customers of different countries how to assemble, install and use the products, need to be translated into different kinds of languages. As English is most used as a universal language, and the Chinese total volume of import and export is large, the demand for the translation of product directions between the two languages is ever increasing. The research object of this thesis is the translation of product directions between Chinese and English.Product directions have been analyzed and researched from a variety of angles. Some researches are under the guide of Skopostheorie, some are from the perspective of contrastive discourse analysis of interpersonal function, some are based on the text features and style of directions or reception of readers, and so on. This thesis will study the translation of product directions from the perspective of aesthetics. That is a comparatively new perspective as far as the translation of product directions is concerned, and relative researches are still in the initial stage, since product directions have long been just regarded as direct explanations without aesthetical feelings. As a kind of pragmatic text, the basic function of directions is certainly to introduce products or the use of products to customers. However, product directions are endowed with the new role of sales promotion in the background of the commodity economy, and to play this role, they must attract customers'attention by providing aesthetical enjoyment. Therefore, aesthetic study on translation of product directions is imperative and necessary.This thesis includes five chapters: Chapter One is the introduction; Chapter Two is a literature review, to review the theory applied in this thesis—translation aesthetics; Chapter Three introduces the text features of product directions and the differences in language and culture between Chinese and English; Chapter Four is the core of this thesis, to apply aesthetics to the translation of product directions and try to put forward some translation methods; Chapter Five is the conclusion.