Business Text Translation From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

It is well-known that with the integration of global economy, the connection in economy between China and other foreign countries has been increasingly close. Accordingly, different kinds of business communication in written form has become more and more frequently. The translation of business texts has been attached great importance by people in translation field and business trading. Many scholars at to home and abroad have conducted lots of study on practical business English translation and put forward many theories and suggestive opinions. In addition, practical business translation still needs to be guided by systematical translation theories. Among them, Eugene A. Nida is a prominent one and his functional equivalence influences many scholars in the world up to now. Nida distinguishes "formal equivalence" and "functional equivalence".He informs the translators that the attention of translation should be changed from the relationship between original version and translated version to translated version and target language readers, namely readers’response can be regarded as the true criterion of translation.This thesis discusses business text translation guided by functional equivalence theory. According to Nida’s functional equivalence theory, the equivalence is "firstly in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style". The core of Nida’s theory is that the response of original text readers is equal with the response of translated text readers. The two points are same in effect because if the source version and the target version are equal in meaning and style, then the response of the original message and the response of the translated message are the same or almost the same.This thesis is based on Nida’s functional equivalence to study business text translation. Three mainly types of business texts, namely business letter, business advertising and business contract are selected as study objects in this thesis. Each business text has its own unique stylistic feature, therefore, different translation strategies are adopted in each type of business text. Thus, by analyzing their stylistic features and translation strategies, we can gain comprehensive understanding of business text and improve our translation level in practical business affairs. The thesis makes a tentative study on the business text translation from a new angle of applying Nida’s functional equivalence theory. The author intends to get further understanding of business texts translation through the thesis and also hopes that the study can provide guidance on business text translation in theory and practical application.This thesis falls into seven chapters. Chapter One is introduction. It introduces the purpose and significance of the study, the current studies and research methodology.Chapter Two presents theoretical guideline. It introduces content and standard of functional equivalence theory and feasibility of applying the theory into business text translation.Chapter Three reviews seven C’s stylistic features of business letter and its corresponding translation strategies. And it also conducts analysis on word choosing based on100business letter examples collected by the author to verify the word features of business letter.Chapter Four presents stylistic features of business advertising from lexical level, syntactic level and rhetorical level. On word level, it adopts lots of monosyllabic verbs, adjectives and creating new words; On syntactic level, it uses abundant simple sentences imperative sentences and interrogative sentences. On rhetorical level, analogy, personification, pun, parody etc. figures of speech are employed. Accordingly, some translation strategies such as literal translation, free translation, adapted translation, supplementary translation and creative translation are adopted in business advertising translation under the guidance of functional equivalence theory.Chapter Five scrutinizes stylistic features of business contract from lexical level and syntactic level. On lexical level, abundant archaic words, formal words, technical words and coordination of synonyms are quite frequently used. On syntactic level, declarative sentences and long sentences are conspicuous features of business contracts. Accordingly, some specific translation strategies are illustrated from both lexical and syntactic levels.Chapter Six is conclusion which summarizes the whole study. Meanwhile, it points out some limitations and puts forward some suggestions of further study.