The C-E Translation Of Company Profiles From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

With the deepening of economic globalization, the C-E translation of company profiles plays an increasingly important role in the promotion and communication of Chinese companies. Many translators and scholars have made studies on the C-E translation of company profiles from different perspectives. Some have provided theoretical guidance in the light of different theories. Some have analyzed linguistic and cultural differences by comparing English and Chinese company profiles. Others have summarized common problems in the C-E translation of company profiles and put forward corresponding translation strategies via case analyses. The C-E translation of Chinese company profiles aims at western customers, however, rarely have studies been made from the perspective of western readers.Studies from the perspective of western readers attach importance to western readers'response and reception, which conforms to the core thought of reception theory. Reception theory is a text-reader paradigm. It breaks through the limitation of author-centeredness and text-centeredness in traditional literary theories and places the factor of the reader as the center of literary studies. Therefore, under the framework of reception theory, a try is made in the thesis to study the C-E translation of company profiles from the new perspective of the reader, in the hope of enriching study angles of the subject and proposing corresponding translation strategies.Examples adopted in the study mainly come from the company catalogue of "EU—China Shanxi Region Partnership Project Taiyuan 2008", and from internet versions of Shanxi company profiles. The thesis is grounded on the four major concepts of reception theory, namely, reader-centeredness, horizon of expectation, fusion of horizon as well as shift of horizon, and makes contrastive analyses on the C-E translation of company profiles. Three translation principles are concluded in the study. First, base on receptive abilities of western customers, and take their response and reception as the fundamental criterion of the translated text. Second, emphasize western customers'horizon of expectations, and make the translated text conform to their horizon of expectations to achieve perfect fusion of horizon. Third, adopt different translation strategies for Chinese and English company profiles in terms of shift of horizon between Chinese and western customers. The above three principles are expected to standardize the C-E translation of Shanxi company profiles. Finally, taking selective translation, condensed translation, and adaptation translation as examples, the thesis demonstrates the applicability of variation strategy in the C-E translation of company profiles.