C-E Translation Strategies Of Company Brochures From Perspective Of Skopos Theory

With the continuous advance of globalization and the rapid development ofChina’s economy, more and more companies are participating or are about toparticipate in international competition. Many large companies in various countrieshave spared no efforts in introducing their own products or services to theinternational market, and as to the promotion of the company with a good image,expansion of foreign markets and a global brand built, the company brochureundoubtedly plays an important role in it. Company brochure, considered as theenterprise’s external display window, plays a vital role in the foreign publicity, aimingat the full three-dimensional display in terms of the style and ideas of the company,and the promotion of products and brand image. An English company brochure, withits expressions easily accepted, forms appropriately established and contents in linewith Western cultural norms, can accurately convey information, thus achieving agood publicity.Company brochure is generally employed on the website or promotional sectorof a company.It belongs to the scope of pragmatic text and focuses on providing thereaders with some substantive information, such as company history, nature ofoperations, the range of products or services, corporate culture, staff, location. Thebrochure should fulfill its functions of publicity and presentation and impress thetarget readers in the context of the target language with the company, ultimatelyhoping to attract the readers to conduct purchasing of its products or complete thepurpose of cooperation.In fact, the informative function and vocative function are themain functions of the brochure.With a preliminary analysis of the company brochure, it is believed that thetraditional translation theory is too rigidly adhering to the "faithfulness" and"equivalence" regardless of the difference about language and culture between Western countries and China, resulting in a bad impact as to the company’spromotional effect. According to Skopos Theory, translation is a purposeful activityand the corresponding translation strategies should be chosen according to theprospective function of the target text. And the C-E translation of the companybrochures can be conducted based on Skopos Theory with effective translationstrategies. To better the understanding, the C-E translation of the company brochureof Sound Environmental Resources Co., Ltd. will be taken as the case study in thewhole thesis.Now, more and more companies have outfitted its website and promotional platewith a company brochure both in English and Chinese, and it seems that they are fullyaware of the importance of the English company brochure. Unfortunately, there arelots of problems existing in many company’s English version of company brochure,such as wordingandphrasing, information processing, layout, determination of the textstyle, the overall grasp, etc. hindering the effective communication and exchange.While in the case study, the wording and phrasing and the information processing arethe two main problems in the C-E translation process of the brochure. Five translationstrategies are employed to slove these problems according to Skopos Theory and thecharacteristics of the brochure, including literal translation, free translation,conversion, addition and annotation. Currently, there are not much systematic studiesas to the translation of company brochure, with some journals having promoted somequestions or raising only some simple examples. As a result, it is very necessary toconduct a comprehensive study about this issue.