A Report On E-C Translation Of Business Letters From Peking Syndicate Limited

In the end of the 1890 s,a batch of foreign companies came to China and conducted businesses,either in the form of solely-owned companies or joint ventures.Peking Syndicate was among the earliest British companies to conduct businesses in China.The company was chiefly devoted to mining businesses and it corresponded with its Chinese counterparts during its time in China(1934-1958).The business letters and telegraphs are now housed in a library.The library designated Chengdu See Translation Company to translate them into Chinese.The author was honored to be given the chance to take part in the translation of the business letters in May,2015.This paper is just a report of this translation project.The author selected Nida's functional equivalence as his translation guidance.Prior to translation,the author made a careful analysis of the source text.Apart from the shared features of business letters,the author found that the business letters employed some legal words and commercial terminologies.Besides,Wade System was used in the spelling of some proper names,such as people's names and names of some Chinese places.On the basis of analyzing words,idioms,sentence structures and devices of coherence,the author adopted sometranslation techniques,like addition,subtraction,alteration and footnote to help him complete the translation.Due to limited time and lack of relevant translation experience,the author's translation leaves much room for improvement.Despite the defect,the author has benefited a lot from this translation practice.The author summarized the translation project and made some reflections on this translation practice.He hopes that this reflection will help him in his future translation practice and be of some help to other MTI students in their future translation work.