On Translating Chinese Product Instructions Into English

Ever since her opening up to the outside world, China, with the cheap labor and rawmaterials, has become the world factory which exports all kinds of products to overseascountries. Apart from the good quality, what matters in marketing is the product instructionin foreign languages, especially in English. This requires the English translation to beaccurate, understandable and consistent with the reading habit of consumers fromEnglish-speaking countries. One purpose of product instructions is to provide consumerswith information about the product and stimulate their desire to purchase. Therefore, if thetranslation is so poor that the information is not or mistakenly conveyed, consumers willdoubt about the quality of the product itself and even refuse to buy it, thus influencing themarketing. Besides, some instructions are to guide the application of the product to avoidtroubles. If such instructions are not precisely translated, operation failure or even accidentwill be caused.Therefore, the improvement of English translation of Chinese product instructions isimperative. Through data collection, this thesis discovers some problems existing in thetranslation of product instructions, hoping to put forward feasible solutions for theseproblems through the combination of theory and practice.The author first reviews previous studies of the translation of product instructions.They are mainly from the perspective of Skopostheorie, Communicative Translation andFunctional Equivalence. Though applicable to certain extent, they have trouble in being putinto practice. Additionally, all of them are western theories without Chinese characteristics.The author believes that local translation theories should be greatly developed in the studyof western ones. So "Read, Adapt and Write" advanced by Prof. Lin Kenan is employed asthe theoretical framework of this thesis. A large number of examples are quoted to verifyits applicability to the English translation of product instructions and how to apply."Read, Adapt and Write" requires the translator to read a lot of parallel texts beforetranslating so as to know the diction and writing convention. On the basis of "Read", theChinese should be "Adapted" to English by imitating the English writing convention,which is the key stage of translation. Texts translated in such way resemble the parallel texts to the greatest extent, consistent with the reading habit of target readers."Write" asksthe translator to write directly in English by following the initiator’s requirements. This isnot to create at random, but to "Adapt" to a further degree on the foundation of "Read".This is considered as the highest level of translation.This thesis carries out further research by following the order of these three words.First, a great many product instructions are read to find out their linguistic features. Thenimitation is employed to translate Chinese instructions. Finally, it discusses about how towrite directly in English. A conclusion is then drawn that "Read, Adapt and Write" can beapplied to the English translation of Chinese product instructions and that it is highlypractical.