The Contrastive Study Of Chairman's Statement Of Corporate Annual Reports In Chinese And English Version From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

In 2016,Fortune China selected the top 500 Chinese enterprises of the previous year.Chinese enterprises have been booming since a large number of companies are listed overseas.The influence of Chinese enterprises is growing stronger.The researcher randomly selected various 50 enterprises from the top 500 Chinese enterprise,and adopted their Chinese and English version of the Chairman's Statement as the object of study.The Chairman's Statement is a formal business document,so the content and form have been rigorously examined.It is the essence of the corporate annual report,which used to disclose the operation performance and financial information.It is also the important tool for chairman to promote the company and communicate with the public.At present,the corporate annual report of Chinese overseas listed companies have not developed maturely.The researcher hope the study can shed some light on the organization of Chairman's Statement of Chinese overseas listed companies.Based on the Verschueren's Adaptation Theory,this thesis employs the qualitative and quantitative method to discuss the Chinese and English version statements,to find out the differences of adaptation process in contextual adaptation and the characteristics of structural adaptation.The findings are as follows:(1)In the contextual adaptation,the adaptations to mental world in Chinese and English statement are similar.It is presented on the chairman adapts to the mental world of the employees,investors and the public.The contextual adaptation is mainly through expressing gratitude and shouldering social responsibility.At the same time,presenting achievements and responding risks cleverly could also maintain the corporate image and win the trust of shareholders.Besides,from the perspective of the social world,it is reflected on the selection of the famous aphorism of Chinese and Western culture and the political factors(policies,laws and regulations)of each country which adapt to their respective readers' cognitive level and reading habits.(2)In the structural adaptation,this paper mainly analyzes the different characteristics of the adaptation from the lexical,syntactical and discoursal level.On the lexical level,English version statement is characterized by wide use of first person pronouns,while the Chinese version adopted more modifiers to attract the reader's interest.On the syntactical level,English version statement employed more simple sentences and less passive sentences.Simple sentences are short and easy to read,so that readers can quickly acknowledge the company's information.Then,the chairman can make a more proactive performance of the company by less use of passive sentence.In addition,the Chinese version statement is willing to use the compound sentence,which conveyed strong emotions by coordinate structure.On the discoursal level,the English version statement focused on the factual data and formed a concise and rigorous structure while the Chinese version adopted various rhetorical device to reinforce the chairman's intention.This paper systematically studied the Chinese and English Chairman's Statement from the perspective of Adaptation Theory,which will help us to interpret this business style from pragmatic view,and also help the chairman of Chinese overseas listed companies to write excellent statement.