Translation Of Business Report In The Perspective Of The Relevance Theory

With the rapid growth of Chinese economy, improvement of national income and steady growth of resident insurance consumption, Chinese insurance industry has developed rapidly and has made gratifying achievements. Therefore, the writer has selected the Annual Report 2012-2013 of Insurance Europe as the translation project. The source texts are analyzed from the lexical, syntactic, textual levels based on Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory. In addition, the translation principles, strategies and skills applied in the project are discussed and summarized in this report, which contributes to understanding the practical significance of relevance theory and the application of business writing translation skills.The report consists of five parts — task description, process description, text analysis, case study and conclusion. The two parts of text analysis and case study correspond to each other as the focus of this report. The source text is analyzed from the lexical level of terminology, proper names, abbreviations, archaic English words, compound words and colloquial expressions. Long and complex sentences and passive sentences are syntactically discussed. Cohesion and coherence are analyzed from the textual level. Moreover, relevance theory is introduced in details, which paves the way for the case study. The translation skills also are discussed in the fourth part. From the lexical level of terminology and proper names, abbreviations, archaic English words and compound words, the translator should consult the official websites to choose the correct meaning. Dealing with colloquial expressions, the translator should translate them flexibly to make the Chinese readers obtain the optimal relevance in line with the context. From the syntactic level, the translator attempts to adopt sequential translation, reverse translation, split translation and combined translation to deal with long and complex sentences. And the passive sentences can be translated into four kinds of sentences, namely no-subjective sentences, predicative sentences, active sentences and passive sentences. From the textual level, five cohesive devices in the texts — reference, substitution, ellipsis,conjunction and lexical cohesion should be analyzed with typical examples.