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DAI Man
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DOI:10.17265/1539-8080/2026.10.006
University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China
In the context of globalization, the automobile industry is now in a transition period of rapid development. It has followed the fuel vehicle industry system for hundreds of years, and is slowly dismantling in the wave of electric and hybrid development. The new industrial structure is being built. In the R & D, production, marketing, and after-sales links of the industrial chain, new words are constantly emerging, and the meaning of the original words has also been changing. The same word is translated in different scenarios. The statement is not the same, which will affect the cross-border technology exchange, hinder the dissemination of overseas brands, and make ordinary users unable to understand the operation instructions of the vehicle. This study puts aside the traditional translation ideas of word by word and sentence by sentence, and uses functional translation theory as the analysis framework. According to the communication purpose of the text, the text related to automobile terminology is classified: engineering and technical documents belong to information text, unified terminology is the first requirement when translating, and priority should be given to following industry standards; brand marketing materials belong to expressive texts. The feelings and acceptance of local audiences are more important than the accuracy of literal meaning. Operative texts, such as owner’s manuals require clear and unambiguous instructions, which is convenient for readers to follow directly. The evaluation of the translation is no longer only based on the standard of literal meaning matching, but also on the use of the text and the professional background of the audience to flexibly adjust the strictness of translation. The study points out that it is impossible to standardize the translation of automobile terms only by translators themselves to supplement their professional knowledge and scene thinking. Automobile enterprises should coordinate the technical, market and after-sales departments to build a shared terminology lexicon of sub-scenes. Rely on industrial cooperation to reduce the actual risk of terminology translation errors.
functionalist, terminology, translation theory, automotive
DAI Man. A Study on the Translation of Automotive Terminology From the Perspective of Functionalist Translation Theory. US-China Foreign Language, October 2026, Vol. 24, No. 10, 386-392 10.17265/1539-8080/2026.10.006
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