Abstract

With the China’s accession to the WTO and development of economic globalization, China is moving away from a nation in which national economy was relatively self-contained, isolated from other countries. Nowadays, business between China and other countries is becoming more and more important. Business English correspondence, as a kind of very important business communication letter, has its special features. However, because of language and culture barriers, there are often many difficulties in the translation of business English correspondence, which even have caused various misunderstandings and trade frictions. The accuracy of translation plays a crucial role in developing international business successfully. Based on Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory, the thesis tries to analyze the translation of business English correspondence from three aspects: words, sentences and text.
 The thesis firstly gives a brief introduction to Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory; the second part deals with features of business English correspondence from three aspects—lexical, syntactic and textual levels, providing as a foundation to further analysis. Then, it develops the most important part of the thesis, that is, the concrete analysis of the application of Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory to the translation of business English correspondence on the three levels mentioned above. Finally, the thesis concludes that the correct application of Functional Equivalence Theory will improve the accuracy of business English correspondence translation.

Key words: Functional Equivalence Theory; translation; business English correspondence

摘  要

随着中国加入WTO和经济全球化的进程，中国经济发生了巨大变化：中国已不再是一个自给自足，经济与别的国家相隔离的国家。如今，中国同别国的贸易变得越来越重要。商务英语函电作为一种基础性的商务交流信函，有其自身的特点。然而，由于语言文化差异，在商务英语函电的翻译上始终存在很大困难，甚至已经引起了各种各样的误解和贸易摩擦。商务英语函电翻译的准确与否对交易的成败有至关重要的作用。本文从功能对等理论出发，着重研究该理论在商务英语函电的词汇、句法和篇章翻译中的具体应用。             
    本文主要分为四部分：首先简要介绍奈达的“功能对等理论”的主要观点；然后从词汇，句法和篇章三个方面分析商务英语函电的具体特点，为下文做铺垫；接着是本文的核心部分，即结合商务英语函电三个方面的特征，具体分析功能对等理论在其翻译中的应用；最后，本文提出结论：将功能对等理论正确地应用于商务英语函电的翻译中可以提高译文的精确度。

关键词：功能对等理论；翻译；商务英语函电