Pragmatic Translation on Request and Apology: Using Translations of Business Letters from Chinese into English as Examples

• Main Authors: Chiang, Hsiu-Yu, 江秀瑜
• Other Authors: Dong,Da-Hui
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/42cdp7

碩士 === 長榮大學 === 翻譯學系碩士班 === 102 === To advance business cooperation, it is important to adopt Politeness Principles in writing business letters. Politeness strategy is one of the most important pragmatic strategies to achieve the win-win outcome in business communication. When we translate business letters, how to express requests and apologies politely is quite important. We should try our best to make people feel comfortable. Thus, to a certain extent adopting politeness strategy in business letters can help achieve desirable results from business negotiations. Previous studies on euphemism and politeness principles in business letters seldom focused on how to translate and express the request and apology politely based on the politeness principles. In addition, there are few studies relating translation of business letters from Chinese to English to the translator’s English proficiency level and the influence of the source text on the choice of politeness strategies when translating requests and apologies. This study analyzed the translations of business letters by undergraduate and graduate students of different English competency levels. By using Leech’s (1983) English politeness maxims and Gu’s (1990, 1992) Chinese politeness maxims as evaluation benchmarks, this study identified the differences in the choice of politeness maxims to express requests and apologies. The study finds that the translators who have different English competency levels have clearly shown different characteristics in their use of politeness maxims when translating business letters from Chinese to English. This study also shows translators with different English competency levels tend to differ significantly in their choices of politeness maxims when they translate requests and apologies: those with higher English competency levels use more politeness maxims than those with lower levels. Based on the results, we make some suggestions to help improve the current practice and teaching in translation of business letters.