Analysis of Business English Translation from Translatability and Untranslatability.doc

毕业论文（设计） Analysis of Business English Translation from Translatability and Untranslatability1. Introduction12. Translatability and untranslatability22.1 Translatability32.1.1 The principle of isomorphs42.1.2 The identity of thought patterns52.1.3 The regularity of grammatical differences62.1.4 Cultural infiltration72.2 Untranslatability72.2.1 Relativity of the principle of isomorphs82.2.2 Fuzziness of language93. Analysis of business English translation from linguistic untranslatability103.1 Phonetic obstruction113.2 Language construction obstruction123.3 Idiomatic obstruction143.4 Rhetoric obstruction153.5 Textual obstruction164. Analysis of business English translation from cultural untranslatability174.1 Cultural nonequivalence184.2 Cultural absence195. Conclusion21References231. IntroductionBusiness English translation is one of the most common-used approaches in dealing with the international business work. In the process of translation, translatability and untranslatablity, which are caused by language and culture, are the major causes of mistranslation. If a mistake was made when doing international business translation, the consequence would be a fatal one. There is an example:“猫哆哩”(Net 2) is a series of food made by Tianxing Food Limited Liability Company Yuxi Yunnan Province. It is found that the brand named “酸角糕”, which is one kind of food in the series, was translated into Acid Horn (酸性的牛角) in the packet. Actually, “酸角糕”is nothing to do with Acid Horn, and it should be “tamarind cake”. As a result, the company received a great loss and had no choice but to abandon the oversea markets as few foreigners could accept “酸角糕” owing to its inappropriate English name.2. Translatability and untranslatabilityTo study translation theories and its branches or applications, one should get a conception that what is translation. In fact, I. A. Richards has claimed that it is probably the most complex type of event in the history of the cosmos. (Nida, 2001:1) This complex process concerns with many subjects: linguistics, social linguistics, literature, etc. In 1968 Nida claims “translation means translating meaning”. (Waard, 1968:60) Then he adds, translation “consists in reproducing the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and second in terms of style.” (Nida, 1969:53)However, certain words and phrases in one language sometimes do not have exact one-to-one corresponding equivalents in another language, which means that it is impossible to find the exact equivalents for some certain language phenomena. Therefore, here comes the issue of translatability and untranslatability. The following figure made by 韩芳 shows the relationship between translatability and untranslatability: UTThe text to be translated intoThe range of translatabilityThe range of untranslatabilityFigure 1: The range of translatability and untranslatabilityBusiness English text involves in a wide varieties, such as trading, finance, tax, advertising, management, etc. As for the principle of Business English translation, there are many theories. The most popular one is the “faithfulness, idiomaticness, consistency” principles which was put forward by Liu Fagong. However, due to the specialty of business English translation, the principles brought forward by translating theorist cannot be fully adopted in business English translation practice, so “the principle of translation” should not be unified but be some difference according to different styles. As Wang Yongtai said: if it is measured by “faithfulness, expressiveness, elegance”, the emphasize should be put into different points in accordance with the style. (张新红,李明, 2006:13)2.1 TranslatabilityAccording to Liu Miqing, the “translatability” in translation theory refers to the translatable degree of source language when doing bilingual translation. (1999:98) Xu Jun claimed that: “At the aspect of practicing, nobody can deny that translation is possible. In other words, “translatability” exists truly.” (2003:263)Although there are differences between different languages, the most important feature of different languages is that there are resemblances between them. Theoretically speaking, there exist basal and broad meaning transferring conditions and ways in interlingual transformation, which was named “the channel for message transferring” by Liu Miqing (1999:99). When the channel for message transferring is available, translatability comes into being and untranslatability emerges in reverse when the channel does not exist or is unavailable.The issue of translatability involves in many aspects, such as the principle of isomorphs, thought patterns, the regularity of grammatical differences, and cultural infiltration, etc. 2.1.1 The principle of isomorphsThe same object forms the same concept in the minds of people all over the world and the connotation of this concept does not vary from language to language. Though people speaking different languages give different signs to all things on earth conventionally, there are different signs of the same object referring to the same concept or connotation. People speaking different languages may share different features toward understanding objective things. However, they share identical cognitive basis, such as identical material foundation. This identity allows them to form a rough but similar framework of conceptual system respectively. This framework of conceptual system is called isomorph, which is the basic condition for people speaking different languages to carry out mental and emotional communication through interlingual transfer, and is the basic theoretical foundation for “translatability” and ensures the channel for message transferring.Liu Miqing illustrates the principles of isomorphs in bilingualism (1999:100):SL Conceptual SystemTL Conceptual SystemExternal WorldSL LinguisticInformation SystemTL LinguisticInformation SystemReflectReflectSLExpressTLExpressDescribeDescribeFigure 2: The principles of isomorphs2.1.2 The identity of thought patternsThe basic patterns and general features of thinking activities of human are identical. No matter what kinds of language people speak, the basic forms of thinking are analysis, synthesis, and generalization. Furthermore, people who speak various languages always think by the similar logic, which makes the information transferred possible. When people express a complex sentences to manifest the relation of cause and effect, no matter what kind of language people speaks and whether they express the “reason” first or they speak the “result” first, the “reason” is always the “reason” and the “result” is always the “result”. For instance, the sentence “because the company broke the contract, we require the compensation” in Chinese will not change to “because we require the compensation, the company broke the contract” in English.The communication of thinking cannot be separated from language since language is the carrier of thought. Though languages are grammatically different and have various structures, the laws of thinking are the same. Therefore, the identity of thought patterns is another important condition that ensures the possibility of translatability.2.1.3 The regularity of grammatical differences Since the content and form of human thought are fundamentally identical, languages in the process of transferring are translatable. Two languages may be different from each other in grammatical structure, however, on one hand, the basic elements and functions of grammar are similar: they both have subject, predicate, object, adverbial modifier, and attributive; on the other hand, the collocations of grammatical elements show certain regularity. Therefore, in language transferring, there are similar and corresponding structures of grammar between different languages. Different languages are similar to and corresponding with each other in the basic framework and in connotation, which provides interlingual transferring with the possibility and material conditions for the channel of message transferring. Since the structures of languages and the collocations of grammatical elements show certain regularity, comparative studies on languages can be carried out and the ways to find out channels for message transferring can be explored, so as to make the possibility into reality.2.1.4 Cultural infiltrationLanguage is the tool of social communication. (胡壮麟, 2001:3) The more the society develops, the more language contacts occur and the more notably cultural infiltration happens.The openness of society has a positive effect on the development of language, and it is self-evident that the more the society opens to outside, the more native language can contact with foreign language, so that there are more infiltrations and similarities between two languages, and naturally, the possibility of translation is greater. With the development of information technology and communication, some cultures are spreading and being accepted and absorbed in other cultures and become parts of other cultures. Due to the openness and compatibility features of culture, one can see that the common leave-taking English word “Bye-Bye” was translated into Chinese“拜拜”.2.2 UntranslatabilityIn contrast with translatability, untranslatalibity refers to the nature of meaning that cannot be relatively transferred in translation.As for the limits of translatability, Catford suggests that “translatability appears intuitively to be a cline rather than absolutely translatable or untranslatable Translation equivalence depends on the interchangeability of the source language (SL) and target language (TL) texts in the same situation-ultimately on relationship of SL and TL texts to the same relevant features of situation-substance.”(1965:93) He considered that there existing linguistic untranslatability and cultural untranslatability in the field of translation. Linguistic untranslatability: “failure to find a TL equivalent is due entirely to differences between the source language and the target language” (Catford, 1965:98). Cultural untranslatability arises “when a situational feature, functionally relevant for the SL text, is completely absent from the culture of which the TL is a part” (Catford, 1965:99).In a certain extent, linguistic untranslatability can be considered to be absolute untranslatability, and cultural untranslatability to be relative untranslatability.As we discussed above, the most important and key theoretical basis of translatability is the principle of isomorphs. Language is the carrier of thought and thought is the reflection of the real world in peoples brain. It is the reason why different languages are similar in nature. However, for different people who speak different languages, the way by which the real world reflects into peoples brain and the way by which the thought becomes to language are unlike, which results in the relativity of translatability. 2.2.1 Relativity of the principle of isomorphsIt has been mentioned above that both the SL and the TL are the reflection of the real world and translatability is based on the principle of isomorphs. However, the principle itself is also relative. The information in SL is the reflection of the real world, which has been processed by the writer. And this processing is inevitably influenced by the writers own limitations. Therefore, the information in SL is not, and will not be the exact and accurate refection of the real external world. The disparity between reflection and the external world make the principle of isomorphs relative.The isomorphs relationship between the translators understanding of the SL and the real meaning of the SL is also relative. The writer and the translator are absolutely two persons. Owing to their different age, experience and character, it is very difficult for the translator to understand the implied meaning of the SL. When translating the literature works, especially the poems, the information may be misunderstood in a certain extent.2.2.2 Fuzziness of languageThe fuzziness of language is an important character of human languages. The fuzziness of language means the meaning of language unit is unclear by nature. It is a communicative device. Without fuzziness, language must lose its nature as a social phenomenon instead of natural phenomenon, but with fuzziness, it is hard to make a clear distinction between lexical meanings. Moreover, this “unclearness” cannot be made clear by the context. For example, “slight damage” is a common phrase in contract terms; however, the accurate degree of the damage in the writers mind is undefined. Therefore, it is clear that the accuracy of the language is also a relative concept. The fuzziness of language is one factor that results in the limitation of translatability. As the SL and the TL are different languages, a fuzzy word in the SL may not have an equivalent one in the TL. 3. Analysis of business English translation from linguistic untranslatabilityTranslation is possible, but there is no perfect translation and meaning loss occurs inevitably sometimes, as some obstructions, which were caused by the differences between different languages and the peculiarity of each language, exist in the channel for message transferring. There are several kinds of obstructions occurring in the translating process. According to Liu Miqing, there are obstruction of language structure, idiomatic obstruction, expression obstruction, semantic obstruction, and cultural obstruction (1999:107-132).The world is becoming smaller and smaller owing to culture infiltration, and it seems that everything can be translated during the international business communication. However, the completely accurate translation when doing business English translation is impossible in that the obstructions never disappear. In the field of business English translation, some of the obstructions, which were brought forward by Liu Miqing, still can be applied. However, based on the theory of Liu Miqing and tremendous researches in business English translation, the author found that the obstructions in business English translation contain some differences. Moreover, through reading hundreds of company profiles, including Chinese ones and English ones, the author found a new obstruction in business English translation-textual obstruction. Thus, the author reckons that the following obstructions are the most common ones in business English translation; they are phonetic obstruction, language construction obstruction, rhetoric obstruction, and textual obstruction. 3.1 Phonetic obstructionThe phonetic elements of all language are similar largely: there are similar vowels and consonants in most language. However, there still are a few unique phonetic features of every single language, which has great influence on the translation practice. The phonetic obstruction between Chinese and English is one of the most common and hardest obstructions in translating, in that the unique phonetic features making us hard to find the channel for message transferring. Thus, it is very difficult to form the cognate equivalence between the Chinese phonetic and English phonetic. In addition, Chinese focus on the meaning of the word, while English focus on the phonetic. Therefore, it is normal that some sentence or phrase cannot be translated exactly between Chinese and English, especially some advertisement sentence of phrase. For example:“美的”家电，“美的”全面，“美的”彻底。(Net 3)Original translation: Midea products are beautiful, Beautiful from top to toe, Beautiful inside out. In this example, the first“美的” is the name of the brand, while the last two “美的” means “beautiful” in English. In this case, these three “美的” contains different meaning in Chinese, whereas there is not any word contains these two meaning in English. The last two “美的” can be substituted with “beautiful” in English by free translation. However, the original translation cannot be a satisfied one, as the phonetic features of SL did not appear in TL. Paying more attention on the phonetic features, the following translation was put forward: Beautiful are our Midea, Beautiful from top to toe, Beautiful both in and out.It is obvious that the translation above is more accurate and “beautiful” since these three phrases were started with the letter “B” and the length of the phrases are almost the same. Moreover, the rhyme of these three phrases is brilliant, so that many customers can remember it once the see the advertisement.3.2 Language construction obstructionThe language expressive structure or means of language is also one of the most common and hardest obstructions in translation. The reason is that language structure is usually represented by the uniqueness of certain structure and this uniqueness generally can only find its equivalent in language of the same family or nation. Take Chinese and English as an example, they are two languages which do not have too many direct connections but contains lots of differences in speech, spelling, vocabulary, and expression, etc. Thus, finding a message-transferring channel to transfer everything of the SL to the TL is not an easy task. In the process of business English translation, language structure obstruction exist normally, for that everyone wants to express his or her meaning with the most attractive and particular language structure features in his or her native language. However, when doing translation, this kind of “beautiful and particular” language structure features can usually be untranslatable. For instance, there is