Exploration Of Corporate Promotional Materials Translation From Functionalist Approaches

With the development of economic globalization, China is undertaking ever-increasing economic exchanges with various nations in the world. Chinese corporations have more opportunities to enter the international market and take part in the international competition. A well translated corporate promotional material contributes to good image of the corporation, promotes the reputation and competitiveness of its products and services, and finally assists the corporation enter into the international market. The function and purpose of corporate promotional materials translation is also like this. Nowadays, more and more corporations tend to provide bilingual corporate promotional materials in their pamphlet and website. However, there are many problems, which are at lexical, structural and cultural levels in the English version. As a traditional industrial base in northeast, Heilongjiang province possesses large amount of state-owned backbone enterprises. In the process of observing and collecting the materials of the above enterprises, the author found that, because of the influence of traditional equivalence theory and limitation of under-development language translation situation, many problems exist in the English version, such as Chinglish words and phrases, over formal structure, redundancy political terms, etc. The inefficient corporate promotional materials simply hinder the effective communication and cooperation between a corporate and the oversea enterprises. At present, few systematic studies have been made in the field of corporate promotional materials translation and the research for common translation problems of corporate promotional materials in Heilongjiang province has not been made. Therefore, it is significant and urgent to make an overall and systematic study on this subject.As a breakthrough to the traditional translation theories, the German functionalist approaches have opened up a new perspective to modern translation theories. The functionalist approaches, with Skopostheorie as its core, emphasizes that translation is an action which has an intended purpose. The translation purpose determines the translation process and strategies. That is, the end justifies the means. In the translation process of corporate promotional materials, the translation methods and strategies should be determined by the intended purpose and function. The skopos rule is the top-ranking rule in the Skopostheorie. Besides, there are two other rules, namely coherence rule and fidelity rule. These two rules should subordinate to the skopos rule. Functionalist approaches provide a theoretical basis for some untraditional translation methods and have significant guiding meaning to corporate promotional materials translation.The translation of corporate promotional materials, not only deals with the language, but also the culture. Because of the differences between Chinese and English at linguistic and cultural levels, the corporate promotional materials have its own characteristics respectively. In the process of Chinese corporate promotional materials translation, translator should consider and obey the linguistic and cultural features of the English countries in order to satisfy target consumers'convention.The paper, takes. German functionalist approaches as its theoretical framework, demonstrates the content and functions of corporate promotional materials, and compares the linguistic and cultural features with English and Chinese corporate promotional materials samples. The translation of Chinese corporate promotional materials should consider the above distinctions in order to fulfill the intended functions of the original text. Based on the analysis of the problems and errors in existing translated versions of corporate promotional materials, the paper provides relevant translation strategies. They are deletion and substitution in linguistic level and interpretation, addition, abridgement, restructuring and creation in cultural level.A conclusion can be drawn that it is feasible to guide the Chinese corporate promotional materials translation in light of functional approaches. The study for the translation of corporate promotional materials in Heilongjiang province from functionalist approaches has both social and practical significance.