On Equivalent Translation Of Business English From The Perspective Of Functional Discourse Analysis

With the acceleration of the globalization and fast growth of foreign trade in China, the translation of business English plays a more and more important role in smoothly performing the commercial activities. Thus the study on business English translation gains much more significance and applicable value.In this thesis business texts are classified into three types, i.e. expressive type, informative type and vocative type, according to their different functions. Business contracts, business letters and commercial advertisements are selected as the typical representative of each type. A detailed discourse analysis to the linguistic features, interpersonal features and textual features of the three types is conducted under the independent register. Systemic Functional Grammar and Register theory is applied as the theoretical basis. The analysis proves that there is an interactive realizational relationship between the variable of register (field, tenor and mode) and the three metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal and textual function).Besides, the author makes a comparison and contrast about the lexical, syntactic structures, mood and modality system, theme system and information system between the three business types and finds out that different business types are conditioned by different registers and present different lexical, syntactic and textual features. Therefore, a successful equivalence of translation relies on the equivalent transferring of the ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaning in field, tenor and mode respectively. As for the translation of the advertising types, except for the equivalence of three metafunctions, a cultural compensation has also to be made to achieve the equivalence in function.