Features And Translation Of Civil Engineering English Terms

The advancement of science and technology stimulates the development of English for Special Purpose (ESP). ESP is a variety of English specially used in a certain field, and whose main function is to pass the information and knowledge of this field. As a branch of ESP, Civil Engineering English (CEE) is a kind of special English used in the field of building industry, and it is now attracting growing attention due to the prosperity of building industry in the 20th century. Vocabulary, terms in particular, is of great importance in realizing the stylistic function of CEE. The work of naming matters, defining phenomena, describing process and explaining rules are all done through terms. Terms play an important role in spreading the knowledge of science and technology and promoting the development of building industry.The research of ESP in western counties could be traced back the 1960s, and some mature theories like register analysis, stylistics and terminology as well as Peter Newmark's communicative translation is quite suitable to study CEE terms. Although many researches have been done on the features and Chinese translation of ESP, researches special on CEE are very few.In view of the above-mentioned fact, this thesis attempts to study the stylistic features of CEE terms based on the theories of register, stylistics and terminology, and to discuss the Chinese translation of these terms. The vocabulary of CEE consists of formal non-technical words, semi-technical terms and technical terms, and all of them have distinctive stylistic features, and productivity, specialization and accurateness are the main stylistic features of CEE terms. In terms of the formulation of CEE terms, creating new forms and using existing forms are the two main methods, and compounds, abbreviations, are the most common form of terms. Through comparison of the Chinese and English for civil engineering, the author finds that the differences between Chinese and English terms mainly lie in the aspects of word meaning, word collocation and word order. Professional knowledge of civil engineering and other disciplines are two major difficulties in Chinese translation for the translators, and these difficulties can be basically solved by referring to related dictionaries and Internet. By comparing Newmark's communicative translation and semantic translation, the author believes that correctness, consistence and understandability can serve the criteria for translation. Besides, some strategies are raised for the translation of newly-coined terms, abbreviated terms and word meaning.