A Functionalist Approach To The Chinese-English Translation Of Company Profiles

Today, an increasing number of Chinese businesses are entering foreign markets. Chinese sales in overseas markets are predicted to rise significantly in the future, especially with China's full access to WTO. Many of these companies have their company profiles translated into English to facilitate the advertising of their goods or services in a foreign market. An examination of these translations has revealed the quality of translations leaves much to be desired. Poor translations can impair the image of a company at best and result in adverse financial consequences at worst.To find out the translation problems presented in the C-E translation of company profiles, the author first explicated the divergences between Chinese and English company profiles in terms of extratextual and intratextual factors, drawing the concepts and a translation-oriented text analysis model from the functionalist translation theory. Such a comparative analysis then guides the addressing of the translation problems from a linguistic and a cultural perspective. Also as part of the study, translation strategies and revised versions are also proposed after pinpointing the translation problems.With an aim to explain why the text-analysis model is relevant to translation, the author applied the translation-oriented text analysis model to the macro-analysis of two sample texts, taking into account of the text composition and text functions. The macro-analysis as such points to the overall structure of the text and allows us to infer the general requirements for the translation.The thesis concludes that from the functionalist point of view, translation is not merely a linguistic process. Guided by the translation brief and taking into account of the translation skopos and the target addressees' situation, the translator selects certain items from the source-language offer of information and processes them in order to form a new offer of information in the target language. It is the specification of the function of the source text or its elements such as content or structure that permits the translator to decide whether or not these elements are useful or adequate to the desired purpose of the target text.