English Translation Of Commodity Instructions: A Perspective Of Skopostheorie

With the rapid growth of international trade, many companies exporttheir products to various countries with commodity instructions indifferent languages. As commodity instructions not only offer informationto readers but undertake the burden of promoting commercial sales andcompanies' reputation, an excellent and successful commodity instructioncontains three aspects of function: informative function, aesthetic functionand vocative function. When a product is marketed to another country,usually the original commodity instruction is translated with appropriateadaptation to cater to the needs of the new market.As translation becomes a commercial activity with more participantsinvolved, and the translator's choice of translation strategy, it appears, isdependent on the power balance between the agents of translation,including not only translators, but initiators, the target-text receivers andon the cultural, historical and economic situation in which translationtakes place. In the translation process of commodity instructions, threerules proposed in Skopostheorie should be followed: Skopos rule,coherence rule and fidelity rule.This thesis attempts to discuss the process of English translation ofcommodity instructions, and the relevance of the translator's task in the translation of commodity instructions and Skopostheorie as advocated byHans J. Vermeer in particular. The manufacturer or the trader plays thekey role of translation initiator in the translating process, by outlining theskopos for the translator to fulfill; receivers are differentially vulnerable toparticular persuasion strategies, and the content and linguistic choices incommodity instructions vary cross-culturally. So the main task of thetranslator is to reach target text's functional adequacy, at times by makingcultural transposition or adaptation inevitably in this type of translation,which is not only legitimate, but also necessary, in the attainment of theskopos.The necessity of giving the translator the power his/her expert statusdeserves if the target text is not only to offer information but appeal toEnglish consumers' preferences and potential needs. Considering thedifference between Chinese and English and readers on both sides, thetranslator should adopt flexible translation strategies on lexical level,syntactic level and textual level to entirely reveal the three functions ofcommodity instructions.But now in domestic market, there exist serious problems about thetranslation of commodity instructions with mistranslation andword-for-word translation printed on various packages or manuals. Thereasons consist of the translator's inefficiency and various external factors,including underdevelopment of Chinese current translation circle, business eagemess for instant profit and domestic consumers' misunderstandingabout medium languages. This thesis proposes the solutions to theproblem, e.g. improving the translator's proficiency and strengthening theregulation of the market. The translation of commodity instructions can beimproved with efforts from all circles.