Functional Approaches To C-E Translation Of Wenzhou Company Profiles

The swift economy growth of Wenzhou requires more capital be invested here, that's why Wenzhou government attaches so much importance to the investment promotion programs. In recent years, Wenzhou municipal government collects key investment promotion projects, has them translated and compiled as catalogues, and puts them on the government's website for publicity, and ultimately for investment and economic growth. The party that organizes the C-E translation can never emphasizes the importance of the translation quality more, but judging from what we get, the quality of the translation is far from desirable (may be because of the time pressure), -- the generally word-for-word translation (of often badly written Chinese) make some of the target texts even unreadable and do not meet the interactional demand.This thesis starts from an analysis of an example, and finds a breakthrough point --'text'. Then it explores the relation between the target text functions and translation strategies, the relation between text analysis and translation; introduced the development of the equivalent theory of discussion necessity. The former relationship is concluded as'macro functionalist approach to translation'and the latter'micro functionalist approach to translation'. After applying both to translation practices in examples for test, the thesis holds that in light of the situation of company profile translation in Wenzhou, Nord's translation brief model proves very practical, for it considers all parties that involved in the translation activity.But the author adds something new to the model, i.e. the client's share of providing relevant information as much as possible. This is based on the fact that the translator is not expert in very business s/he deals with, and although the internet is an infinite information pool which is open to the translator, rendering a satisfying translation within the time limits is often out of the question. Brief information exchange will greatly assist the translator to identify information needed, which ensures a win-win situation. The thesis then proposes two translation strategies: adaptation and imitation. Two commonly used Chinese sentence patterns are closely studied:'通过ISO9000认证'and'集…于一体'; the research methods utilized here will help in the lower level research of the so called'top-down'approach.The innovativeness lies in the exploration of the importance of pre-translation communication based on Nord's model, the proposal of imitation and the translation of'通过ISO9000认证'which is lousily and lavishly translated in many company profiles, not only of Wenzhou companies, but of companies throughout China.The thesis has six chapters. In Chapter One the thesis uses an example to demonstrate the questions a translator might encounter in company profile translation, which leads to the breakthrough point -- the text analysis. Chapter Two is literature review; the German functionalist approach, the British functionalist approach and a brief history of equivalence are studied. Chapter Three is a trial in which both approaches are tested in practices. Chapter four focuses on the comparison of the two approaches, and it is discovered that the macro approach, namely the German functionalist approach is more applicable in situation. Two forms are designed for the findings. Chapter Five gives out two important translation strategies and methods of tackling two commonly seen problems. Chapter Six is the conclusion in which the author proposes many other angles to look into company profile translation, for example: the cultural translation, Chinglish, computer utilization, etc.