Foreign Business Correspondence is an important means of establishing foreign trade relations and exchanges. It provides an important means of transmitting information to people who are engaged in international trade activities all over the world. It also helps them to communicate with each other more conveniently. In practical foreign trade activities, apart from participating in exhibition or visiting clients, people have fewer opportunities to communicate with foreign customers face to face, they prefer to contact by mail. Whether the letter is concise, clear, decent or not plays a vital role in the success of international trade. By analyzing the conciseness, accuracy and practicability, this paper mainly explores how to simplify the language for writing a successful foreign business correspondence. “Foreign Business Correspondence as a basis of the trading business, plays an indispensable role in international trade. The survey has found that in actual foreign trade business relationships, in addition to participating in exhibitions or visiting customers, which have more chance to contact with foreign customers face to face, in other situation, most of the time is taken to contact by mail.”(Li 5) Comparing the massage of English-speaking countries with that of non-English speaking countries, we find that language of the former is more official. But in general, the message conveyed is more simplistic and colloquial.
2. Literature Review
Belonging to economical and social factors, foreign business correspondence is one of important factors that influence the effects in the international trade. Ashley A finds that whether the language of foreign business correspondence is concise and comprehensive plays a vital role in almost all cultural backgrounds and business relationships.
Chinese scholars, like Jia Zhuli, Li Qiang and Li Yuanyuan, including Zhang Yu, whose data analysis and quantitative studies also have confirmed that among English-speaking countries and non-English speaking countries, more and more people no longer adhere to the traditional and cumbersome structure of language, but for concise and simple. So, we can obviously find the trend of simplification in foreign business correspondence.
2.1 The definition of Foreign Business Correspondence
Foreign business correspondence refers to letters, telexes, faxes and e-mail. It includes foreign trade and domestic trade of course. With the development of global economy and the expansion of Chinese foreign trade, the status of foreign business correspondence is becoming increasingly important. Not only it directly affects the impression of writers, but also affects business's success. 来!自~751论-文|网www.751com.cn
In today's highly developed information age, Foreign business correspondence is not limited to paper letters, it can also be e-mail, fax or MSN. Foreign business correspondence is one of important means of establishing foreign trade relations and trade exchanges. Foreign business correspondence unlike ordinary letter in that it has its own unique language, content, attitude, and stylistic characteristics of formats, but also learns the common sense of Intercultural Communication Business Correspondence. The most popular contents of foreign business correspondence: to establish business relations, inquiry, an offer, reply, sales contract, packaging, insurance, compensation and arbitration. “Basic requirements of foreign business correspondence are themed, concisely refined, completely expressed. Foreign business correspondence format includes a fixed language, idioms and sentence patterns. Business Correspondence tone is the tone of each part”. (Zheng 58) Development of the letter and inquiries are generally polite reply, expressing gratitude; usual business contacts to be careful, trust; urged to pay urgently and politely; customer claims are to be understood, given sufficient explanations and instructions. 刍议外贸函电用语的简单化(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_78706.html