Ambiguity And Approaches To Disambiguation In The Translation Of Business Texts

With the development of economic globalization and China's entry into WTO, business English has become an essential tool in the international communication. Due to the differences between English and Chinese, language translation is indispensable and the translation of business texts is becoming more and more important in the international business activities. Business texts belong to a kind of practical writing, which is generally formal in style, exact and meticulous in words and sentences.Both sides involved in the business activities concern their vital economic interests and each side attempts to gain the biggest profit from the transactions. Therefore, business English translation plays an important role in bridging the cultural and commercial gaps between Chinese and foreign economy entities. Sometimes even a tiny mistake in translation will lead to unmeasured financial loss of one side. So in the process of translation, translators are demanded to deeply understand not only the exact original meaning, but also the original mood and style in business English. They must be prudent enough to avoid any ambiguity.However, ambiguity is a common language phenomenon and in some cases it is hard to recognize without a serious analysis. During the translation of business texts, ambiguities sometimes occur because translators lack overall consideration in dealing with polysemous expressions. Even worse, on some occasions, people will use these ambiguities to reach their illegal aims. Therefore, when doing the translation of business texts, translators must be careful enough to any ambiguity, whether it appears in the source language or the target language.Ambiguity falls into two main categories: linguistic ambiguity and pragmatic ambiguity. This thesis focuses on linguistic ambiguity appearing in the business English at the lexical and structural levels. In the mean time some approaches to disambiguation are supplied in this thesis in the hope of shedding some light on the translation of business texts.The thesis is made up of the following parts:Chapter One: Introduction to the thesis;Chapter Two: Lexical and syntactic features of business texts and the criterions for their translation;Chapter Three: Classifications, features and negative effects of English ambiguity and the importance of disambiguation;Chapter Four: Analysis on ambiguity appearing in the business texts translation at the lexical and syntactic levels;Chapter Five: Some effective approaches to disambiguation.Conclusion...