Technical Writing Principles Employed In Technical Texts Translation

With the rapid development of Chinese economy, translation programs have already been offered in many universities nationwide, so the criteria for professional translators are much more demanding than ever before. Then how do we translate? Are those who can translate the literary masterpieces qualified professional translators? I have been a post graduate student in Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation, Shanghai International Studies University since September, 2009. In the very beginning, most of my classmates translated non-literary texts with the criteria of faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance normally employed in the literary translation. However, the translation product turned out to be a failure after we knew how our clients responded and what the reference translation was.In this thesis, on the one hand, I am going to illustrate how the technical writing principles are applied in the English-to-Chinese translation of technical texts on the basis of two translation exercises given by the instructor. Although the meaning of the original text is fully conveyed, it is still not a good translation without abiding by the technical writing principles. On the other hand, a specific case study is presented by discussing the stylistic features of product instructions and technical writing principles so as to highlight the importance of technical writing principles in English-to-Chinese translation of the technical texts. In the meantime, much significance should be attached to the technical writing in the process of constructing the translation discipline in China.