A Report On E-C Translation Of Vehicle Component Technical Specifications:a Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

In the wake of rapid expansion of China's automobile industry,vehicle component companies have witnessed a tremendous development.Technical specifications are vital documents in automobile industry,which have a profound importance in manufacturing high quality products for customers.Different from common English texts,vehicle component technical specifications have unique language features.This report is a case study of vehicle component technical specifications issued by GM.The author has identified numerous problems at lexical level and syntactic level in the process of E-C translation of vehicle component technical specifications,which could be classified: ministration of technical terms,judgment of translation necessity of abbreviations,ignorance of the tone of source languages and ignorance of expression habits of the target readership.Through literature research,the author found that Nida's Functional Equivalence can provide significant guidance to E-C translation of the source texts in that the translation of the source texts requires the closest natural equivalence of the source language,both in meaning and style.Under the guidance of Functional Equivalence,this report puts forward translation methods and techniques to solve the identified problems.In translating technical terms,transliteration,literal translation,pictographic translation and determining the meaning according to specific context and technician's explanations should be adopted.Methods and techniques such as zero translation,literal translation and completion should be adopted to translate abbreviations.Translation methods and techniques at syntactic level can be summarized: keeping passive voice,using active voice,conversion,division and linear translation.