University Webpage Translation: A Mass Communication Perspective

Against the background of growing globalization, many Chinese universities are trying to increase their communication with the international world through English-version websites. The purpose of these public relations websites is to help the universities establish a favorable image, attract overseas researchers, professors and students, and create opportunities for international exchange and cooperation. Present study first aims to solve the problems existing in the English-version webpages and then attempts to propose a model and specific principles for use with university webpage translation so that a friendly and favorable international public opinion towards Chinese universities can be created through the enhanced webpages. Given the unique features of the webpage translation, the study adopts an empirical approach in the theoretical framework of mass communications. A small corpus is built from the texts of the"About the University"columns downloaded from 60 university websites and a survey questionnaire is designed to obtain the feedback information from a group of native speakers of English. After an elaborate analysis of the seven communicative elements of the webpage translation as well as the results of the questionnaire and a careful comparison of the texts in the corpus, the author, in light of Lasswell's"5W"communication model, proposes a model and specific principles for university webpage translation which can also be applied to the translation of webpages of other organizations.