The Functional Translation Theory and the Translation of Chinese Corporate Profiles---开题报告

Research Background and Significance

   After entered into WTO, more and more Chinese corporations are involved in to international business. At the same time, Chinese corporations receive more and more chances to establish cooperation relationship with foreign corporations and participate in international competition. For export-oriented corporations, the focus of the work is the development of potential customers and the conductions of foreign cooperation; meanwhile the key to the success is to establish a good corporate image in the minds of customers. Therefore, the external image of the enterprise is also increasingly subject to the attention of each foreign trade enterprises and domestic and foreign scholars.

   However, there are still many problems in the translation of the corporate profiles in China at present. Most of the English translation has not yet got rid of the mode of "copying the literal translation”. Although the translation is faithful to the literal meaning of the original text, it does not conform to the expression of English, and cannot express the deep meaning of the original text. Moreover, this kind of thinking is often Chinglish that many foreign businessmen cannot understand. This kind of translation does not only affect the effect of external publicity, but also affects the image of the country. There are big differences between Chinese and English company profiles in the content, values, language style, the article structure and other aspects. Therefore, it is a great significance to do a good corporate profile translation.

Research Status at Home and Abroad

In 1970s, there was a modification in the western translation theory from the pure linguistic translation to focusing on the culture of the target language. Translators paid more attention to the translation and the reader, especially the communicative function of the target language. In this context, the representatives are Katharina Reiss, Hans Vermeer and Christiane Nord. Their functional translation theory provides a new perspective for the study of translation theory.

There are also a number of scholars have conducted research in the subject of the translation of corporate profiles. Hu Zhenkui (1998) stated that the biggest characteristics of the corporate profiles should be practical; Ding Rongrong(2001) pointed out that the translation of Chinese corporate profiles  present is relatively rigid and even is stereotyped; Zhang Hu (2002) argued that the company profile should bear the features of  scientific English which emphasizes indirect, logic, compact and objectivity; domestic scholars, Chen Dan (2006) and Xu Kaili (2006), promoted that  there are both similarities and differences between Chinese and English  profiles, and they should have their own language characteristics.

A further research on the translation of corporate profiles will be conducted on the basis of the previous studies, from the perspective of functional translation theory.

二、Content

1. Introduction

2. Some Problems in the Translation of Chinese Corporate Profiles

2.1. Problems in the Translation of Words and Phrases

2.2 Problems in the Translation of Culture

2.3 Problems in the translation of Language

3. Functional Translation Theory

4. The Skill of the Translation of Chinese Corporate Profiles

5. Conclusion

三、References

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