An Analysis Of C-E Translation Of Company Profiles From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

With the rapid development of economic globalization, China’s reform and opening-up have been brought to a high stage after China’s successful entry into the WTO. More and more Chinese companies are in the global markets, hoping that they could accomplish their goals. Petroleum industry is of no exception. Because petroleum enterprises are the pillar industry of the national economy, it is necessary for them to gain a large share of the international oil market. In order to achieve their goals, they should conduct some promotion effectively. Thus, company profiles play an important role in building a good company image and promoting its products and services.Some Chinese petroleum company profiles are not only written in Chinese, but also written in English correspondingly. From my observation, I find that petroleum industry pay inefficient attention to the translation between two languages. Thus, there are many problems in their English profiles. These problems have bad effects, which include linguistic level and non-linguistic level, on communication between companies and potential clients. As a kind of special texts, company profiles have their own purposes and functions. Traditional translation theories are not able to meet company profiles’ translation. Thus, this thesis is to study C-E (Chinese-English) translation of petroleum company profiles from the perspective of Skopos theory.Functionalism, especially Skopos theory, has opened up a new perspective for translation study. According to this theory, translation is not the exception, since every action has its own purpose. The purpose is the determinant in the process of translation. Translation strategy selection should be determined by expected translation purpose. There are three rules in Skopos theory:Skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule, and the Skopos rule is the top-ranking rule of them. The fidelity rule and coherence rule are subordinate to the Skopos rule. The main concepts of functionalist approaches are expected to have important effects on C-E translation of company profiles.For the above reasons, the author tries to analyze translation of company profiles in oil industry from Skopos theory. The First Chapter is the introduction, which includes the background information and the significance of the study, data collection and research methods. Chapter Two is the literature review, in which the author gives the translation theory development and also gives a rough picture of the German functionalist approach to translation and introduces the previous researches. Chapter Three is an overview of company profiles, which includes definition, characteristics and functions of the company profiles. Chapter Four is the analysis of C-E translation of company profiles in oil fields from linguistic and non-linguistic perspectives, hoping to find the differences and problems between these two languages. Chapter Five is about the factors that cause the problems in C-E translation in oil fields and at the same time gives possible suggestions for this kind of problems. Chapter Six is the conclusion of this paper.From Skopos theory’s perspective, this thesis concludes that translation is not only a language code-switching process, but a purposeful activity. It is the target text’s function that decides which part of the information in the source text is useful and what strategies are to be adopted to realize its function in communication. Therefore, adaptation and reorganization of the source texts are needed in the translation of company profiles. Translators can really apply theory of the German Functional School to the translation of company profiles in oil companies so that Chinese oil companies could achieve more effective communication with foreign customers and play a more important role in the international market.