From the Viewpoints of Language Economy to Construct the Concise Translation Strategies of Business Letters

• Main Authors: Ailun Wu, 吳艾倫
• Other Authors: Zixuan Li
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/64478831958253901158

碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 翻譯學研究所在職專班 === 98 === Business letters are one of the major communication tools in business transaction. But, due to time pressure, translators of business letters often have to accomplish the task soon enough; hence arise lots of problems in translation. These problems, generally speaking, include redundancy, ambiguity in expression, and failure to use professional terms. But so far, not many researches have ever addressed these problems, and hence it is necessary to work out some strategies for translating business letters. Given the nature of business letters, conciseness and efficiency are two main considerations in the translation of business letters; however, conciseness and efficiency are at odds with each other. How to solve this thorny problem? This thesis will make use of Grice's Cooperative Principle and the theory of Language Economy to tackle this thorny problem. Selected corpus will be analyzed to establish model translation practice so as to form good strategies in business letter translation. This thesis will also point out which characteristic of business letter matches which maxim of the Cooperative Principle in question. Finally, the breach of the Cooperative Principle will also be discussed. This thesis will start with some deliberation on the relationship between the theory of business letter translation and the issue of economy. Then random selected corpus that this thesis uses comes from a wide range of both importing and exporting business letters. They will be carefully analyzed to construct some concise translation strategies. The conclusion on translation strategies, it is hoped, will prove that Cooperative Principle is valid and can be used in concise translation of business letters. The thesis ends with some findings for concise translation strategies which includes Deletion, Omission, Professional Terms, Straightness, Abbreviation, Reduction, Substitution, Weakening and Listing. This thesis expects to assist translators to analyze the target language more efficiently and easily, and to provide translators with more clear strategies to work with when the job needs to be done.