Euphemistic Expression in Business English and Their Translation 商业英语委婉语及其翻译.docx

Euphemistic Expression in Business English and Their TranslationIntroductionAs the cooperation of business overall the world becoming more and more frequent, people pay more attention to the etiquette of international business. The area of business is often compared to the battlefield, however, the weapons in business is different from those in the war. They do not apply to munitions but the polite expressions, appropriate writings and euphemistic utterances to establish the profile of a company and to satisfy the varied needs of their customers, which form the outstanding features of the business language. To establish a perfect profile of companies, the businessmen often turn to the euphemisms which are polite, appropriate, and euphemistic when they need to express their wishes and opinions, and at the time they need to come up with some suggestions or requirements. Euphemism and euphemistic expressions are widely used in business English which nearly cover all processes, such as inquiry, offer, counter-offer, shipment, insurance and status inquiry. In Chinese, people often apply to 您, 贵 to show the respect to their customers, to 请to suggest, to 是否, 能否,可否 to weaken modality. Compared with Chinese euphemism, the euphemistic expressions in English are quiet varied and flexible. This paper analyzes euphemistic expressions in business English from the aspects of grammar and glossary to help us to understand and appropriate euphemism.Euphemism plays an indispensable part in our social life, which aids to achieve successful social interchange and co-ordinate human rapport. Being a kind of lubricant in business, euphemism has caught more and more attentions of enterprises and linguistics. By study closely to the language pattern, we will be more qualified to throw ourselves into the business world. Despite the large number of studies done on euphemism, we find that euphemistic expression in business English as a sub-stream, still has further room to explore. Considering the importance of euphemism in business English and the translation of the euphemistic expressions in everyday use, we believe it is of significance to study it. As a result of this, my essay endeavours to approach the issue from the classification and the translation grounds. We believe the principles, the study of language use can render us the nature, motivation real meaning and functioning mechanism of the euphemistic expression used in business English.This thesis contains three parts, which can be further divided into three chapters.Part one introduces the definition and origins of euphemism, which we hope to pave way for our further analysis.Part two is the major part of the essay which includes two clues-the first part presents the principle and standards when we use the euphemisms in business English; in the second part presents a literature review to the classification of the euphemism in glossary and grammar.Part three is also an important part in the paper in which various strategies are listed so that we can understand and use the euphemism more fluently in business English. Because the euphemism is so important in business English, we have to figure out how they are used in business communications. When we research the negotiations and other patterns of international business, euphemisms can be found through the whole process: inquiry, offer, count-offer and acceptance etc. There is a great amount of English euphemism; undoubtedly, the translation of euphemism becomes extraordinarily vital in business communication.Therefore, this paper will give a scientific classification of the euphemistic expression in business English together with some principles of its application, in order to present a systematic knowledge about English euphemism in business. As for the translation, the paper will try to state the appropriate strategies and also some principles. In this way, we will be more qualified in the international business.Chapter One Definition and Development of Euphemism1.1 The Definition of EuphemismThe word euphemism is derived from a Greek word meaning fair speech. The prefix eu means good, sound well and pheme means saying and speaking. Hence the literal meaning of euphemism is to speak with good words or in a good manner. It is defined an indirect word or phrase that people often use to refer to something embarrassing or unpleasant, sometimes to make it seem more acceptable than it really is in the Advanced Learner's English-Chinese dictionary. The euphemism is used to avoid taboos to achieve ideal communication. It is such an important social-cultural phenomenon that we should place a great attention on it. A good knowledge can help to improve social communication.In current English dictionaries，euphemisms are defined as follows:l) Substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered blunt or offensive. (American Heritage Dictionary，the 3rd edition，1992)2) Word, etc. used in place of one avoided as e.g. offensive，indecent，or alarming. (Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics，Shanghai Foreign Languages Publishing House，2000，12)1.2 The Development of Euphemism As we all know, language is usually regarded as a mirror reflecting society. Then, euphemism, which is a crucial part of language in view of communication, reflects the phenomenon of people's psychological world. Euphemism originated from primitive society. At that time, people believed that language was not only a symbol but also with magic power. It could bring them misfortunes as well as fortunes, mentioning a certain things ran the risk of being punished, so they usually avoided these taboos. For example, one of the Ten Commandments in Bible was Thou shalt not speak my name in vain. Thus God was generally called as Gad, J. C., the almighty, the Creator, and Satan as the Goodman, Black One, the Old Gentleman, etc. Nowadays there are still a lot of euphemisms used in the similar way. E.g. people would try to avoid such taboos as old, disease or death as they mean something unhappy. For old people, there are euphemisms such as senior citizens, golden age, seasoned man, the elderly, etc; for diseases, there are also many euphemisms, such as Aids, TB, Big C, social disease, mental trouble, etc; and for death, depart, sleep, go home, join the majority, are frequently used. As time goes on, people begin to use euphemism not only to avoid taboos, but also to speak in a polite and elegant way, and to avoid unhappiness in conversations.English euphemism acts like a kind of lubricant which makes communications going on smoothly. As an important social-cultural phenomenon, euphemism has aroused great interests of the experts and scholars at home and abroad. They had given detailed description to euphemism, in western countries; euphemism is closely connected with traditional taboos such as disease, sex, death, excretion, etc. They are defensive in nature, offsetting the power of tabooed terms and otherwise eradicating from the language everything that people prefer not to deal with directly. Gradually, the euphemism has become an independent research area, whose main branch is the euphemistic expressions in business English.Since the people involved in business are from different cultural backgrounds, they have to avoid the taboos from different cultural communities in communication. As the international business develops, the euphemistic expression has developed into a main branch in the study of euphemism.Chapter Two Euphemistic Expression in Business EnglishIn business English, people can not survive with euphemistic expression. The euphemism exists in every stage of the international business: inquiry, offer, count-offer, shipment and etc. Regarding to the different cultural backgrounds and long distance of the shipment, there are often some disputes and misunderstandings in the international business. If there are not euphemisms, the business could not go forward because of some direct and unpleasant words. On the contrary, the euphemism aids to deal with some taboos and conflicts, which makes the international business become more and more smoothly. When people use the euphemistic expression, they are always obeying to three principles: cooperative principle, politeness principle and facial principle. The three principles are concluded by their functions: avoidance, politeness and gloss-over function. However, the paper endeavors to the different ways to use the euphemistic expression in business English according to the functions and principles.2.1 Standards and Principles of the Euphemistic Expressions in Business English2.1. 1 Cooperative Principle and the Euphemistic Expression in Business EnglishPaul Grice, a philosopher and logician, made an attempt to explain the course of natural conversation, in which implied messages are frequently involved. His idea is that in making conversation, the participants must first of all be willing to cooperate; otherwise, it would not be possible for them to carry on the talk. The general principle is called Cooperative Principle, abbreviated as CP. It goes as follows:Make your conversational contribution such as required at the stage at which it occurs by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engage.The CP has four branches, which are flouted by euphemism.The maxim of quantity requires what one says should be informative but do not make if more informative than needs. The maxim of quality requires one not to say what you believe to be false and not to say that for which you lack adequate evidence. The maxim of relation requires one has to say what to be relevant. In ordinary conversations, people often say things that are not relevant with the topic of the conversation. In Chinese, there is a saying goes顾左右而言他. The maxim of manner requires one to avoid obscurity of expression and ambiguity and to be brief and orderly.The unemployment is such an unpleasant thing that one may not express it by someone is out of work, while someone is out is more appropriate. The omitting of some words can create a more euphonious impression. (Euphemism flouts the Maxim of quantity.)Essentially speaking, euphemism breaks the maxim of quality because euphemism often represents what is better or worse than the reality. In western countries, for instance, some salesmen prefer others to call them sales manager, in this way; they feel some kind of enhancement of their social status.（Euphemism flouts the Maxim of Quality） -Why there are so many tough terms in the L/C？-We will guarantee the shipment. (Euphemism flouts the Maxim of Relation.)2.1.2 Politeness Principle and the Euphemistic Expression in Business EnglishThe maxim-and-principle approach to politeness, which was pointed out by Britain linguists G. H. Leech, namely includes appropriateness, generosity, praise, modesty, similarity and sympathy. In communication with other, we should choose appropriate and indirect words to avoid offence. As euphemism has a character of mildness, it can be used to help to make your speeches gentility and give people a good impression. This helps companies and businessmen establish perfect profiles in international business.The polite function of euphemism is tried to avoid being harsh or impolite in the communication. When you are taking about the appearance and stature of other people, we should be aware that the love for beauty cuts across all people. So if you directly describe people inefficient is not as good as plain, it is extremely impolite and will show disrespect to them and even hurt them. Not only in terms of appearance and stature, in many other aspects, in order to make the listener or the third party comfortable, we use euphemisms. For example, People are used to describe some occupation to promote the owner's status, such as automobile engineer for mechanic, dry cleaning engineer for d cleaner. There are expressions like disadvantaged, deprived, low-income, and underprivileged for poor individuals.2.1. 3 The Face Theory and the Euphemistic Expression in Business EnglishFace is defined as an individual's self-esteem. “Based on the face notion of Goffman that “face” is a sacred thing for every human being, an essential factor communicators have to pay attention to, and that face wants are reciprocal (if one wants his face cared for, he should care for other people's face).” According to Brown and Levinson, nearly all speech acts are face-threatening acts. There are two kinds of face: one is Positive Face; the other is Negative Face.Positive Face refers to our need to be accepted and liked by others and our need to feel that our social group shares common goals. Positive Politeness orients to preserving the positive face of other people. When we use positive politeness we use speech strategies that emphasize our solidarity with the hearer, such as information pronunciation, shared dialect or slang expressions, nicknames, more frequent reference to speaker and hearer as we, and requests which are less indirect.Negative Face refers to our right to independence of action and our need not to be imposed on by others. Negative Politeness orients to preserving the negative face of other people. This is much more likely if there is a social distance between the speaker and the hearer. When we use negative politeness, we use speech strategies that emphasize our deference for the hearer. Nicknames, slang and informal pronunciation tend to be avoided and requests tend to be more indirect and impersonal, often involving could you or could I ask you to or even referring to the hearer in the third person.” Commonly, in daily life, there are many threatens for people's face, such as orders, suggestions, warns to listeners.2.2 Classification of Euphemistic Expression According to GlossaryEuphemistic expressions can be divided into several parts by phonetic, glossary, and grammar. In phonetic, piss-piss could be used to replace pass-water. In glossary, claim department, which was used to deal with the claims and complains from clients, is replaced by customer service to relieve the relationship with their customers. Despite of these, in difficulties is the replacement of in debt, out of game of bankrupt, get the sack of be dismissed, developing country of poor country, economy priced of cheap, and etc. 2.2. 1 The Euphemism Expressed in NounIn business English, nouns can help people to avoid some harsh words and establish a more comfortable environment to make it easier for their customers to accept their business terms. I'll illustrate it by some examples.We are extremely sorry for our inability to advance shipment.(shipment)我方为不能提前装运而深表遗憾。The word inability is used here to avoid the unpleasant feelings which may be resulted by we cant. The speaker meant to weaken the word we cant, which can g