A Study Of ELF Features In C-E Business English Translation And Translators' Culture Identity Construction

With the globalization of economy,the international business communication between China and other countries has become more frequent.Consequently,English is used widely among communicators with different mother tongues in the context of globalization,which has led to the emergence of English as a lingua franca(henceforth ELF).Since ELF has been widely applied in business communication,ELF phenomenon in business English translation deserves attention.Business English translation is not only linguistic transferring,but also cultural exchange.That explains"cultural turn" in translation study.In the post-colonial translation study,translation with power,ideology and culture is emphasized.As a key concept,culture identity construction is of significance in interpreting translator's translation decision making in ELF context.Taking Chinese-to-English(henceforth C-E)translation texts of company profiles as examples,this paper firstly adopts the descriptive method to present ELF features in the target samples;secondly,it applies the review method to explore prime factors which cast impacts on culture identity construction of ELF translators with the support of post-colonial translation theory.The research conclusions are investigated as follows:(1)The ELF features in C-E translation texts of company profile can be presented at two levels:lexico-grammatical and pragmatic level.The lexico-grammatical features include two aspects:lexical features and syntactic features.The former is about the usage of noun,verb,adjective and preposition;the latter is concerned with the sentence tense and sentence expressions.The ELF pragmatic features of translation texts can be reflected in the communication between translators and readers.To be specific,the four aspects are ensuring successful communication,avoiding failure on the foundation of having conveyed information,content-oriented communication and attaining more supports for identity maintenance.Through the C-E translation texts of company profiles,the features are identified in these four aspects respectively:Chinese English and China English usage and zero-translation phenomena,literal translation phenomenon,non translation phenomenon,and free translation phenomenon.(2)ELF features in the target samples are closely relevant to the construction of translators' culture identity in translation process.According to the post-colonial translation theory,there is underlying power manipulation in translator's translation decision making,which affects translators' culture identity construction.American English and British English are usually regarded as Standard English,which influences translators' standard language ideology.Moreover,the western cultural hegemony can be exposed in the C-E translation texts.Thus,the standard language ideology and culture all cast impacts on culture identity construction of translators.It can be concluded that power,standard language ideology,and culture are main factors having influences on the ELF translators' culture identity construction.Based on the research above,it can be indicated that the ELF phenomenon in the business English translation should not be neglected.There are implications of ELF in business translation in China as well.Importantly,ELF phenomenon in translation practice deserves much attention.Furthermore,through the analysis of culture identity construction of translators,it can be concluded that translators should have culture equality consciousness,culture confidence and culture accommodation attitude.That can guide translators to make the actual decision in translation practice.