On Applicating Politeness Principle In C-e Translation Of Business Letters

Nowadays, the tendency of economic globalization in the world brings about increasingly closer international trade cooperation. Since China’s accession to the WTO, the international trade between China and other countries has been developing rapidly. And now China is already one of the most powerful importers and exporters in the world. The business letter has always been an important communication tool in the international trade. A polite business letter could promote the trade and help achieve the business cooperation. Therefore the presentation of courtesy in the business letter is of great significance for both buyer and seller. For this reason, the translation of business letters between different countries becomes necessary and important.Many linguists and translators are devoted to analyzing the business English and its bilingual transformation. Among those analyses, some scholars study the politeness of business letter from the perspectives of lexicon, syntax and discourse for the purpose of guiding the writing of business letters and formulating the corresponding translation, which has obtained good results. However, many of the studies need to be further investigated. Because they attach too much importance to the writing characteristics on the presentation of courtesy and the corresponding translation, the related theories behind these two aspects of researches are ignored. In addition, the translation methods which are proposed from the linguistic analysis on the politeness of business letters lack the theoretical support; therefore they can not be adopted widely in the translation of business letters.Because the phenomenon of politeness in the interpersonal communication is always the studying object of many linguists at home and abroad, many theories are formulated to investigate the politeness of the communicative behaviors. English linguist Geoffrey Leech proposes the Politeness Principle with the aim of maximizing the polite expressions of beliefs and minimizing the impolite expressions of beliefs in the interpersonal communication, which reflects people’s assumptions and explanations about the communicative behaviors. Moreover, Leech formulates six maxims under his theoretical framework in order to guide the communication politely and successfully. The translation of business letter, however, as a form of written communication in the specific context of business interaction should also abide by the Politeness Principle. The successful application of Politeness Principle in the translation could improve the interpersonal relationship, ease the contradiction and facilitate the communication; therefore this thesis applies Leech’s Politeness Principle to the C-E translation of business letter.32translation samples are collected from the author’s previous work in a foreign trade company called Shenzhen Bluecell Sicence&Technology Company. The impolite expressions in the translation of the32business letters are summed up and analyzed according to the related principles. To offer solutions for those translation problems, Leech’s Politeness Principle is adopted to guide the retranslation and his six maxims are used appropriately to correct the impolite expressions in the original translations. On the basis of the modifications with the employment of Politeness Principle, the new translations become tactful and courteous.