国际商务英语信函中名词化及其英译汉研究Nominalization in International Business English Letter and Its E-C Translation.doc

国际商务英语信函中名词化及其英译汉研究Nominalization in International Business English Letter and Its E-C Translation 摘 要随着全球经济一体化的到来，商务英语在国际商务交流中正扮演着越来越重要的角色，而国际商务信函仍旧是商务活动中传达商务信息的重要载体，是商务交流中不可或缺的工具。目前，随着中国对外改革开放与加入WTO，其国际商务活动在与日俱增。笔者认为掌握国际商务信函的翻译技巧对参与国际商务交流活动是很有必要的。名词化是“人类语言中最普遍的特征之一”，这是英语语言学家Roderick A. Jacobs在其68年著作中提出来的。系统功能语法学家从功能主义角度出发，注意到了名词化在语篇层面的组织功能和社会功能，其创始人Halliday M.A.K提出了语法隐喻理论，为名词化研究奠定了理论基础。本文尝试从国际商务英语信函的语篇特征即正式性、简洁性与礼貌性等方面出发，利用Halliday M.A.K的理论来研究名词化在此类信函中的语篇功能。通过分析论证，笔者认为名词化的使用可使商务信函语篇更加正式、礼貌与简洁。同时根据翻译等效原理，笔者认为翻译时，我们应在正确理解原文的基础上，保持其原有语篇特点。为此，笔者在文中第五部分“结果与建议”中，尝试总结出了一些相应的翻译技巧。总之，笔者认为掌握不同语言之间的差异规则以及正确组织语言对翻译人员而言是非常重要的，这将有利于保持源文本与翻译文本的相同性。由于本文只选取了有限的例句，样本的片面性可能导致结论出现缺陷和不足。所以，本文只是建立在国际商务英语信函中的名词化翻译研究上的一次尝试，希望能引起其他翻译者对这个项目的关注和重视，并期待进行更多的相关研究。AbstractWith the integration of globe economy coming, business English is playing a very important role in the communication of international business, and international business letter writing is still a basic activity involved in international business, which remains a very important form of communication. At the same time, with the Reform and Open-door Policy enacted in China and its accession to WTO, international business affairs in China have rapidly increased. Therefore the writer thinks that the mastery of business letter writing skill is very necessary to make a business affair go no smoothly and get a successful trade relationship. “Nominalization is a universal characteristic of human language,” that is said by the English linguist, Roderick A. Jacobs in his book in 1968. Systemic-functional linguists from the point of functionalism realize the organization function and social function of nominalization. Its founder, Halliday M.A.K offers grammatical metaphor theory, which lays a basis for the study of nominalization.Therefore depending on the grammatical metaphor theory of Halliday M.A.K., the paper attempts to analyse textual functions of nominalization in international business letters, from their three textual features: formality, conciseness, and courtesy. Through the analysis, the write thinks that nominalization can make business letters more formal, polite and concise.At the same time, according to the Equivalence Theory of Translation, the writer thinks that while translating we should be on the basis of properly understanding of resource texts to maintain original textual features of target texts. And the writer also attempts to offer some relatively translation skills in the fifth part, “Results and Suggestions” of the paper. In a word, the writer thinks that the awareness of the regularities of such differences between the languages and the proper organization of the language are very important for translators. It will be helpful for maintaining the similarity between source texts and target texts.Because the example sentences cited from the source letters are limited, which will possibly lead to bias in the results. The writer hopes that this tentative research can provide useful experience and help raise the interest from other translators, and also expects that further research on nominalization translation could be invited in the near future.Table of Contents1. Introduction.1.1 Research Background.1.2 Research Objective.1.3 Project Design.11112. Rationale.2.1 Definition of nominalization.2.2 Types of nominalization2.3 Functions of nominalization.2.3.1 Clause-internal Function.2.3.2 Textual Function.2.3.3 Genre Function.2.4 Definition of International Business English Letter.2.4.1 Formality.2.4.2 Conciseness.2.4.3 Courtesy.223445667773. Data Description. 84. Data Analysis.4.1 Types of nominalization.4.1.1 The class of verbs to that of nouns.4.1.2 The class of adjectives to that of nouns.4.1.3 The rank shift from a clause to a nominal group.4.2 Functions of nominalization.4.2.1 Formality.4.2.2 Courtesy.4.2.3 Conciseness4.3 E-C translation of nominalized structures in international business English letters4.3.1 Formality.4.3.2 Courtesy.4.3.3 Conciseness889999101113141415165. Results and Suggestions.5.1 Types of nominalization.5.2 Functions of nominalization.5.2.1 Formality.5.2.2 Courtesy.5.2.3 Conciseness.5.3 E-C translation of nominalized structures in international business English letters.5.3.1 Formality.5.3.2 Courtesy.5.3.3 Conciseness.171717171818181819196. Conclusion. 207. Bibliography. 228. Appendix. 23Nominalization in International Business English Letter and Its E-C Translation1. Introduction1.1 Research Background Nowadays, with the integration of globe economy coming, business English is playing a very important role in the communication of international business, “According to the statistic, nearly 90% of 1.6 billion people all over the world, who serve English as their first language or second language, will make a connection with business English everyday.”(Liu，2002). At the same time, international business letter is still a basic activity involved in international business, which remains a very important form of communication. Furthermore, with the Reform and Open-door Policy enacted in China and its accession to WTO, international business affairs in China have rapidly increased. For international business letters play an important role in the development of goodwill and friendly trade relationships, and they can also deliver their companies images to the public, the writer thinks that the mastery of business letter writing skill is very necessary to make a business affair go no smoothly and get a successful trade relationship.1.2 Research ObjectiveSince “Nominalization is a universal characteristic of human language.” (Jacobs, 1968), and grammatical metaphor in the form of nominalization is abundant in all adult discourse, the writer thinks that the mastery of nominalization will be helpful in writing and reading. Therefore the paper attempts to study international business letter by dealing with the textual function of nominalization. The writer hopes to improve her writing skills from the study, and also hopes that the study can be used for reference and discussion in the future business affairs.1.3 Project DesignThe paper consists of five parts. In addition to the ongoing introductory part, the second part offers a rationale on nominalization from systemic-functional linguistics, including its concept, types and metaphoric functions. In addition, the stylistic characteristics of international English business letter are also considered. In the third part, for the analysis the writer selects 30 sentences from business letters. The details of research design are introduced, including date collection and data analysis method. In the fourth part, the discussions and results are presented to analyse textual functions of nominalization in business letter and its E-C translation from three aspects: formality, conciseness, and courtesy at the four types of nominalization. Finally the author will summarize the research and look into the future of international English business letter.2. Rationale 2.1 Definition of nominalization Many linguists have studied nominalization from their own unique perspectives, especially some mainstream linguistic schools, such as structural linguistics, transformational-generative linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and systemic-functional linguistics. Comparatively, nominalization is studied by systemic-functional linguistics more systemic and deeper.Halliday (1994:352-353) interprets nominalization from the perspective of grammatical metaphor as he claims “nominalization is the single most powerful resource for creating grammatical metaphor. By this device, processes (congruently worded as verbs) and properties (congruently worded as adjectives) are reworded metaphorically as nouns; instead of functioning in clause, as Process or Attribute, they function as Thing in the nominal group”.The term, grammatical metaphor was first introduced by Halliday in his monograph “An Introduction to Functional Grammar”(1985). According to the scholar, the sentence functions as a grammatical device for describing a situation. A situation typically consists of three components: processes, participants and circumstances. Sentences, which encode the above information are of two types: semantically congruent (e.g. John arrived yesterday) and semantically noncongruent (e.g. Johns arrival took four hours). In semantically congruent sentences, the semantic functions play primary syntactic roles. The Agent John is the Subject, the Process arrived is the Predicate, the Circumstance yesterday plays the role of the Adjunct. In non-congruent sentences, the semantic functions play other, secondary, syntactic roles. The Agent John and the Process arrived function as the Subject, the Circumstance four hours as the Objective Complement. Such being the case, the semantic units having been turned into participants can now perform other semantic functions, John is now the Restricter, arrival is the Affected. This type of change of semantic functions is called grammatical metaphorization, and the syntactic unit that demonstrates this change is a grammatical metaphor (Halliday, op. cit., 321).In a word, nominalization may involve a transcategorization between classes, most often from class of verbs or adjectives to that of nouns; or involve a rank shift from a clause to a nominal group.2.2 Types of nominalization The process of nominalization follows a direction of metaphorization (Halliday 1996, 1999) shown as follows, a move towards the concrete with nouns as the terminal point.relator circumstance process quality entityAccording to this direction, Halliday gives four types of nominalization (Halliday 1996, 1999) shown in the following Table:TypeGrammatical shiftExampleSemantic elementgrammaticalclassgrammaticalfunctionscongruentmetaphorical1adjectivenounEpithet/AttributeThingunstableinstabilityqualitything2verbnounprocessEventThingtransformtransformationeventAuxiliaryThingwill/going toprospectcan/couldpossibility/potentialtense,modalityCatenativeThingtry toattemptwant todesirephase,contingency3prepositionnounprepositionMinor processThingwithaccompanimenttodestinationminor processprepositional phraseLocation, ExtentClassifier(dust is) on the surfacesurface dustminor process+Thing4conjunctionnounConjunctiveThingsocause, proofifconditionrelatorHallidays classification is clear and manageable enough to be applied to the analysis of metaphoric nominalization in the writers study for its textual function in international English business letter.2.3 Functions of nominalizationWith regard to the functions of nominalization, many scholars from domestic and foreign countries (Halliday, 1994 & Hu, 1996 & Fan, 1999) have done a systemic study and conclusion on it under the framework of systemic-functional linguistics. The functions of nominalization might be summarized into three types:2.3.1 Clause-internal FunctionOn the one hand, the nominalized thing can be the “relator or part of circumstances” of a clause. On the other hand, nominalization is usually combined with other grammatical metaphors, serving as a noun phrase to become an element of the clause. This is just the clause-internal function of nominalization. For example:Several factors combined in the 1920s to accelerate the trend toward a truly national culture. The combination to accelerate the trend forebodes a clash of culture.The combination in the said example represents the “participants” of the clause, achieving the cohesion of these two sentences. The internality of a clause, nominalization is also often combined with other grammatical metaphors to make the materialization of these metaphors possible. Some of them are often used for organizing the “evaluation”, and showing the “logical relations”, such as cause-effect relationship, comparison relationship, and dependence relationship etc. For example, in the following example, it shows a cause-effect relationship:The realization of the face urges us to prevent this from happening.2.3.2 Textual Function:Halliday clearly claims that the grammatical metaphor exits both in ideational function and interpersonal function, so it should also exit in textual function. Martin (1992) specially referred that grammatical metaphor becomes a tool of organizing a text by unfolding a theme and rheme of the text. In the two kinds of metaphoric theme and metaphoric new information studied by Martin, nominalization is an essential means and mode of expression realization. The function of nominalization in textual metaphor is mainly shown for textual cohesion. Fan (1999) points out, the cohesion function of metaphoric nominalization in English discourse is mainly realized by establishing the cohesion of theme- rheme . When Hu (1994) talks about theme- rheme and textual cohesion, he points out that the cohesion of theme- rheme is one of the important methods for realizing textual cohesion and Coherence. When we want to develop a content, containing a verb in the last clause, into a new theme, it is usually nessessary for a grammar request to pack a structure which containing the said verb, and the noun is the only syntactic word class that can recognise such pack. Therefore, grammar will nominalize the verb, so that a content containing a verb might be packed to function as the theme of the next clause. In this way, metaphoric nominalization has become inevitably one of the important methods to realize the cohesion of theme- rheme .2.3.3 Genre Function Metaphoric nominalization increases the information density of a clause by using nominalized structures instead of clauses, so as to express more information. Hence, Halliday thinks that nominalization is a major source of producing high-density lexicons in grammar. The characteristics of nominalization such as condensed information and concise expressions can often meet some special interpersonal needs, and achieve some special interpersonal functions. The use of nominalization is closely related to the textual genre. The use of nominalization might make the discourse seem more formal and more logical. Therefore nominalization is widely used in formal written language such as science and technology, law, business and so on.From the analysis of the above three levels we can conclude that the usefulness of the metaphoric nominalization can be accounted for by the fact that it allows us to make more participants. Being liberated from its original function, the unit can now perform other semantic and syntactic functions in the sentence. Besides, the new participants are not ordinary nouns but nouns, which have inherited the original semantic information from the underlying process expressed by the finite form of the verb. The use of such participants has the effect of condensing information within the sentence; it contributes to language economy and often serves as a means of cohesion.2.4 Definition of International Business English LetterBusiness English is English especially related to international trade. Many non-native English speakers study business English with the goal of doing business with the United States or other English-speaking countries, or with companies located in non-native English-speaking areas but nonetheless using English as a shared second language. (/wiki/Business_English) International business letters are often an arrangement or regarded as evidence of a contract. They are written for information exchange and bridge over the desires between buyers and sellers. Stylistic characteristics of International Business English LetterA most effective international business letter should be objective and conciseness, at the same time they must be friendly and courteous. Therefore “if you want to write a good international business letter, you often have to obey these three principles, formality, conciseness and courtesy” (Liu, 2001).2.4.1 FormalityAn international English business letter is a kind of formal language style of an official correspondence, therefore, in accordance with the use of lexicon, it mostly employs the formal written lexicon instead of the basic lexicon and spoken lexicon. It attempts to achieve its effectiveness of conciseness, simpleness, concreteness, and correctness, so as to showing completely the characteristics of its formality, standard, and seriousness.2.4.2 Conciseness Conciseness means complete message but briefest expression with no sacrificing clarity or courtesy. A good business letter should be precise and to the point. Single lexicons are more efficient than phrases. Wordy languages and redundancy require more time and money to type and to read. They are not what modern business people want.2.4.3 CourtesyCourtesy means to show tactfully