TITLE:
A Study on Terminology Consistency in the Chinese Translation of Consumer Electronics Manuals from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory
AUTHORS:
Jia Liu
KEYWORDS:
Functional Equivalence Theory, Consumer Electronics User Manuals, Terminological Consistency, Chinese Translation Strategies
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.13 No.7,
July
6,
2026
ABSTRACT: Consumer electronics user manuals are a combination of technical information and operational instructions, and their translation quality directly affects user experience and product safety. Guided by Eugene Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory, this paper conducts a systematic study on the high-frequency issue of terminological inconsistency in the Chinese translation of such texts, incorporating international standards’ requirements for consistency and comprehensibility of use information. Taking the official user manual of Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 true wireless earphones as a typical corpus, this paper analyzes problems such as terminological drift and syntactic redundancy from the two main dimensions of lexicon and syntax, and proposes specific translation strategies for achieving functional equivalence as well as process control methods covering pre-translation, in-translation, and post-translation stages, aiming to provide references for high-quality Chinese translation of consumer electronics user manuals.