Résumés
Abstract
Politeness is an important element in interlingual business communication. Translators use bilingual dictionaries as tools helping then in business discourse across cultures, but dictionaries do not contain the relevant pragmatic information. The functions of dictionaries are used to determine which pragmatic information types are needed when translating business letters. The analysis focuses on a Spanish-English business dictionary and its treatment of politeness in special sections dealing with business correspondence. The findings show that the treatment is insufficient, because users’ business-language competence does not enable them to express the right level of politeness. Bilingual dictionaries should offer a systematic treatment of cultural and genre-specific means of expressing politeness in contrastive, informative texts showing the specific uses of politeness in business discourse. Finally, proposals on what to include and how this can be done are made, with a view to helping translators.
Keywords/Mots-clés:
- business correspondence,
- politeness,
- English,
- Spanish,
- dictionary
Résumé
La courtoisie est un élément très important de la communication dans l’entreprise, et elle joue un rôle essentiel dans toute situation d’utilisation de plusieurs langues. Normalement, les traducteurs emploient des dictionnaires bilingues pour résoudre des problèmes d’ordre culturel, dans le cadre de la communication d’entreprise à laquelle participent habituellement des personnes de traditions culturelles différentes.
Dans la majorité des cas, ces dictionnaires n’offrent pas d’indications pratiques très valables. Ainsi, pour traduire ou rédiger des lettres commerciales en anglais ou en espagnol, un traducteur peut avoir recours au dictionnaire The Oxford Business Spanish Dictionary. Spanish-English/English-Spanish qui offre quelques exemples et explique certaines caractéristiques. Cependant, l’analyse de cette partie du dictionnaire nous montre que l’information est peu utile puisqu’on n’y explique pas les ressemblances et les différences entre les lettres, dans les deux langues.
Ceci pose problème en ce qui a trait à la courtoisie : aussi croyons-nous qu’il serait nécessaire de réorganiser la partie du dictionnaire afin de donner des indications plus adaptées aux besoins des usagers du dictionnaire.
Parties annexes
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10.7202/012998ar