Functionalist Approaches Applied Into The C-E Translation Of Chinese Company Websites

In the age of globalization, with the rapid development of information technology and the wide use of the Internet, an increasing number of Chinese companies establish their own websites and at the same time, the English versions are established. Companies make publicity for themselves, advertise their own products, sell corporate image and then promote their business development at home and abroad by using company websites, which can improve the competitiveness of companies and expand the company influence. The English version of company website is aimed to display company strength, introduce products and services, and provide on-line service for the customers and potential customers who are native speakers of English. The quality of the English version of company website, to some extent, reflects the strength and credibility of a company. Therefore, website translation becomes increasingly essential and significant.As a window of company information company profile acts an important and essential role. People who want to learn more about the company may start from reading company profile. Company profiles belong to a kind of special text and they are informative and operative. The quality of translation affects the intended function of company profile.By collecting and studying samples, the author finds that most English company profiles of Chinese companies are translated according to their Chinese company profiles, and some of them are the word-for-word literal translation. Traditional translation theories hold that’loyalty’,"faithfulness",’equivalence’ is always the norms that translators should follow."Faithfulness’,’expressiveness’ and ’elegance’ have long been followed by any translation in China.’Faithfulness’ requires that translated text should be faithful to source text. Any information can not be deleted or rewritten in the translated text. Word-for-word translation strategy is consistent with the perspectives from traditional translation theories, but without taking full account of target readers’ cultural background and thinking model, which is difficult to do a perfect translation. As a result, traditional translation theories can hardly provide any systematic guidance to translators.German functionalist approaches, as a breakthrough of traditional translation theories, provide the theoretical basis for translators to analyze and solve problems which are encountered in the process of translation. According to the functionalist approaches, human action, including translation, is determined by its purpose.(Reiss& Vermeer.1984) Due to differences in cultural background and thinking model, the translator, based on an analysis of the source text, is justified to adopt various strategies to achieve the intended function of the target text. Many translators have applied functionalist approaches into the translation of company websites. In light of functionalist approaches, the author decides to study C-E translation of company profile, using functionalist approaches as the theoretical framework.By adopting qualitative analysis and comparative analysis, the author collected samples of English and Chinese company profiles from company websites of fifty Fortune500companies, including25Chinese companies and25British and American companies. The conclusion is drawn after comparison and analysis. The author takes German functionalist approaches as her theoretical basis, first introduces the functions of company profile, and then makes a comparative analysis between Chinese and English company profiles in terms of discourse, linguistics, styles and culture in order to get the target readers’expectations and language norms of company profiles in English-speaking countries. Although there are similarities between them, translators should understand these differences and take full account of them. Next, the author put forward some practical translation strategies from both verbal and non-verbal level under the guidance of functionalist approaches. Non-verbal level translation strategies involve the improvement of translators" competence, the data establishment of terminology and formulaic expressions, while verbal level translation strategies refer to addition, deletion, interpretation and rewriting. If translators adopt these translation strategies, maybe they could hand over the acceptable translated texts. Meanwhile, the author provides examples to illustrate how the mentioned translation strategies are applied into the C-E translation of company profiles on Chinese company websites from the perspective of functionalist approaches. Finally, within the functionalist approaches theoretical framework, the author summarizes that translators should adopt translation strategies making the translation of company profiles localization.The conclusion of this paper is that from the functionalist perspective, translation is a not a language code-switching process. Translators should be guided by the translation brief and take into account of the translation skopos and the target readers’ situation. In order to fulfill the desired purpose of the target text, this requires translators to use a variety of translation strategies to adjust the source text. It is not impossible and inadvisable that translators do word-for-word literal translation of Chinese profile texts. The author hopes that this paper can give translation researcher some help.