A Study Of English-Chinese Translation Of Foreign Trade Letters From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

In the increasingly burgeoning international business, foreign trade letters, with the advantage of convenience and efficiency, have taken the place of telegram and telex to become the foremost option of more international firms for communication. As important written communication media, foreign trade letters seek not only to promote products and convey messages, but also to maintain business relations and enhance corporate images. Besides, foreign trade letters are formal documents whose content is characterized by correctness, completeness and conciseness and whose style is required to be polite, courteous and clear; meanwhile, facts and data are clear and concrete. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to understand and translate foreign trade letters appropriately, which in turn sets a high standard for translators.Adaptation theory was initially proposed by the Belgian pragmatist Jef Verschuene in his book Understanding Pragmatics published in 1999. The theory provides a novel insight into the explanation of the process of dynamic linguistic choices. Firstly, using language is a process of continuous making of linguistic choices, whether consciously and unconsciously for language-internal and/or language-external reasons. Secondly, variability, negotiability and adaptability of language allow language users to make appropriate linguistic choices. Variability is the property of language which defines the range of possibilities from which choices can be made. Negotiability is the property of language responsible for the fact that choices are not made mechanically or according to strict rules or fixed form-function relationships, but rather on the basis of highly flexible principles and strategies. Adaptability is the property of language which enables human beings to make negotiable linguistic choices from a variable range of possibilities in such a way as to approach points of satisfaction for communicative needs. Lastly, adaptability of language, with a comprehensive theoretical framework for analysis of language use, has powerful explanatory competency and application value. Adaptability of language can be approached from the following four interrelated angles:Contextual Correlates of Adaptability, Structural Objects of Adaptability, Dynamics of Adaptability and Salience of Adaptability.This thesis purports to analyze qualitatively 24 foreign trade letters with English-Chinese translation on the basis of adaptation theory. Research scope is limited to salutation, body and complimentary close of foreign trade letters. This research aims to answer the following two questions:(1) How is the English-Chinese translation of foreign trade letters adapted to four angles of investigation, i.e. contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability and salience of adaptability?(2) What are the characteristics of translation strategies that are induced from the perspective of adaptation theory in translating foreign trade letters?Samples are analyzed from four interrelated angles of investigation; meanwhile, the role that features of foreign trade letters play in the translation process are also taken into consideration. Finally, translation strategies are summarized. As the samples selected are not invariably impeccable, the author proposes suggestions for revising some translations in the samples. Results of this study show that A multitude of translation strategies, including omission, addition, inversion, converting negative sentences into positive ones, converting passive voice into active voice, inversion of clauses, transliteration, literal translation etc., are available for adaption to different dimensions, but certain translation strategies are more frequently used in one specific dimension than the others. Throughout the English-Chinese translation process, specific features of foreign trade letters are emphasized under different dimensions of the adaptation theory. For example, the principle of politeness is more explicitly emphasized when adapting to mental world. Moreover, translator should make sense of the usages of trade terms, abbreviations and formulaic expressions and pay due attention to meaning nuances of phrase pairs before translating foreign trade letters.