1.1 Non-equivalence in Lexical Translation
In business translation practice, it is necessary to take these linguistic features into consideration when we deal with business translation. The English used in the register of business has its unique features, which are commonly known as seven Cs in business English translation, which include Completeness, Concreteness, Clearness, Conciseness, Courtesy, Consideration and Correctness”. However, in this paper, the author will analyze the characteristics of business English from lexical syntactic and discourse levels and try to prove the existence of non-equivalence in business English translation.
1.1.1Polysemy in Business English
In the course of translation, vocabulary is the foremost issue for the translator to take into account. Vocabulary is the smallest and the most basic unit of a language. Business English vocabulary owns its features of wording accuracy, un-modification and the preciseness of special terms.
It’s very common that polysemy happens in business English translation. Usually, when it happens it must be applied in different subjects, fields or majors. So we need to make sure that we can understand the particular meaning in certain context when we translate the words. Here are some examples:
(1)They are US$2each, but if your order exceeds 2000 pieces, we will give you a 20% discount.(它们的单价为2美元，若定或超过2000件，我方将给予你公司八折折扣)。
(2)The exporter may take the accept bill to a discount bank before the maturity if he is in great need of the amount of money.(出口商如果急需这笔钱，他可以把这个承兑了的汇票去银行贴现)。
(3)Exchange dealers only work with these differences, i.e. with premium and discount, expressed in decimal points, between the spot and forward prices.(外汇经理人只赚取这些差额，即利用即期汇率与远期汇率之间的差价，以小数点表示的贴水和升水)。
These three sentences above have the same word “discount”, but the word has three different meanings in several areas. In foreign trade area it means“折扣”，in bank area it means“贴现”while in foreign exchange it means“贴水”.
Because of various meaning in certain words, its meaning can be changed once we add different prepositions or we change the order in a phrase. For example, property in goods(货权)；property of goods(货物属性)；appearance surface(外表)；surface appearance(表面状况). Moreover, when words are collocation with different nuns, it may generate totally different meanings, for instance, instrument of payment(支付工具), instrument of pledge(抵押契据), instrument of ratification(批准证书), instrument of credit control(信用管制手段), instrument of acquisition(购置凭证) and so on. From the examples above we could see that non-equivalence exist in business words translation.
