A brief analysis of cultural and pragmatic factors in business English translation

Introduction: Business English translation is a subject that integrates various languages ??and business knowledge. We will share with you a brief introduction This paper analyzes cultural and pragmatic factors in business English translation, come and take a look!

Abstract: With the internationalization and integration of business, multiculturalism coexists. In Bixing, culture has become extremely important in exchanges and trade between countries. Language is part of culture and at the same time it is the carrier of culture. English, as the most widely used language in international business activities, has attracted widespread attention from researchers in recent years. At the same time, the study of cultural factors in business English has also attracted great attention from scholars. This article introduces pragmatic factors based on previous research on cultural factors in business English translation, aiming to analyze the pragmatic factors in cross-cultural business English translation, propose principles and methods of business English translation from a pragmatic perspective, and avoid pragmatic factors. Mistakes.

Keywords: Business English translation; cross-cultural; pragmatic factors

1 Introduction

Language is a part of culture and the carrier of culture. plays an important role. Interlingual translation is not only the mutual exchange of two languages, but also the transmission of two cultures. Culture is a factor that cannot be ignored in translation. As the famous American translator Eugene Nida said: To truly do a good job in translation, mastering two cultures is even more important than mastering two languages, because words only have It only has meaning when used in a specific culture. ?The impact of cultural factors on translation activities has been favored by linguists in recent years. Of course, this has also attracted great attention from international business English users or researchers. Research on the relationship between business English translation and culture has sprung up. Appear. However, few people have conducted an objective and comprehensive analysis of pragmatic factors in business English translation. This article aims to fill this gap, so as to shed some light on the solution of pragmatic factors involved in business English translation activities.

2 Business English translation and cultural and pragmatic factors

International business activities themselves are a kind of cross-cultural communication. As the global business language, English is renowned for its diversity and variability. As economic exchanges between our country and other countries become more and more frequent, various commercial and trade enterprises have flourished. In economic exchanges, business English translation plays an important role, and whether the translation is appropriate or not may be related to the failure of economic exchanges.

As a part of translation activities, business English translation itself is a kind of interlingual conversion. It not only involves the conversion of one language symbol into another language symbol, but also includes the transformation between different business cultures. communicate. Sperber&Wilson (1995:2) believes that the communication method is even more important than the communication content. Therefore, if a translator wants to be successful, he must first allow the readers of the target text to obtain the same reasoning distance as the readers of the original text, and then consider "reproducing the set of assumptions made by the original author for his intended readers." The translation process first begins with original language communication, and original language communication begins with the explicit process from the communicator's perspective and then the inference process from the listener's perspective. Therefore, only when the translator reproduces the necessary reasoning according to the respective environments of the speaker and the listener can the staged success of the translation work be achieved. To engage in business English translation work, one should not only be proficient in the language, but also be familiar with the culture of the source language. Various cultural conflicts will arise in cross-cultural business communication, and the appropriate use of language to resolve cultural conflicts is one of the tasks of pragmatics. Therefore, the understanding and knowledge of cross-cultural business communication cannot be separated from the support of pragmatics.

As a subject that integrates various languages ??and business knowledge, the relationship between business English translation pragmatics, culture and pragmatic factors is very close. Culture is the cornerstone, and business English translation is the conversion generator. , Pragmatics is an essential application for the business English translation machine.

3 Analysis of pragmatic factors in business English translation

Pragmatics is a discipline that studies the use and understanding of language. It studies how speakers use language and external context to express meaning. , the study of hearers’ decoding and reasoning of utterances uttered by speakers.

Translation, as a cross-cultural communication activity, is a three-dimensional relationship, that is, the transmission activity of ideas and culture between the author of the original text, the translator and the readers of the target text. The translator plays a key connecting role: first, the listener. He needs to use his own knowledge of the original language language and cultural background, and during the translation process, he needs to figure out the translation intention of the original language author, and use pragmatic principles for reasoning. The original text is decoded, and then the translator changes his role and becomes a speaker. Through his knowledge of the target language and the cultural background, he can grasp the understanding of the target language readers and translate the original text according to the original author's intention and style. The decoded results are presented to the target language readers, allowing them to achieve roughly the same feeling as the original readers. In the process of cross-cultural translation, due to the different cultural backgrounds of different translators, their understanding of the original work is also different. This involves issues of understanding, reconstruction, how to deal with pragmatic and cultural factors in the translation, and how to convey the pragmatic meaning of the original work. During the translation process, the translator should fully understand the connotation of pragmatics, base on the context of the original text, fully explore the pragmatic meaning of the original author, make use of various semantic associations in the article, and deeply understand the cultural connotation contained in the article. At the same time, he should also combine The reader's level of understanding is presented to the reader with a translation that is fluent and highly receptive, thus achieving the standards and significance of cultural translation at the same time.

For example, in business English trademark translation, the cultural habits and aesthetic psychology of Chinese and foreign consumers must be taken into account, and it cannot be simply transliterated or free translated. In the past, some people translated "White Elephant" battery as White Elephant, which caused the product to be frustrated in the European and American markets. Because in English white elephant is a "useless and cumbersome thing". In addition, errors in language usage in business English translation are caused by a lack of professional business knowledge. For example: The draft has been presented to the Bank of China for clean collection. In this sentence, "clean" does not mean "clean", and "collection" does not mean "collection". "clean collection" refers to "clean collection". . The full sentence is translated as: The bill of exchange has been handed over to Bank of China for clear collection. Polysemy is common in business English. When translating, it is necessary to analyze it in conjunction with the specific context to accurately grasp the pragmatic information of the word and avoid mistranslation.

4 Conclusion

Various factors constitute different cultural systems between the East and the West. People’s conceptual traditions, ways of thinking, value orientations, and language expressions are also very different. Business English translation is a cross-cultural interlingual communication. The translator must have proficient language knowledge, be familiar with multiple cultures, master pragmatic skills, and complete other types of mechanisms; in addition, when using memetic theory, When translating, should we use foreignization translation or domestication translation, etc. These issues await further discussion.

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