A Study Of C-E Translation Of Online Recruitment Advertisements From The Perspective Of Register Theory

In recent years, an increasing number of companies have started to recruit their new employees on the internet when economic globalization and Internet era become two leading themes in this world. Due to its lower cost, wider range of influence, more rapid communication, and larger targeted audience, online recruitment has gradually replaced the traditional recruitment methods. At present, online recruitment advertisements have become the main channel for job seekers to search for their jobs. Therefore, the translation of online recruitment advertisements assumes increasing importance as well. It can not only demonstrate the recruiters’overall strength to domestic and foreign enterprises, but can enhance corporate image and attract excellent talents as well. However, we find that online recruitment advertisements have various translation problems, such as grammar mistakes, random addition or deletion of words, less expressive words, ambiguity, pragmatic failure and etc. Most of these problems are caused by the differences in language, culture and thinking mode between China and the western countries. In addition, the translation is also limited by the translator’s capability. Meanwhile, there exist some register-related problems in the translation of online recruitment advertisements. It is mainly because the translator ignores the register analysis of the recruitment advertisement discourses in the process of translation when the register analysis plays a vital role in the translation of online recruitment advertisements. As a special form of practical writing, online recruitment advertisements have aroused interests among scholars. But there are a limited number of domestic studies on online recruitment advertisements, to say less of the studies on translation of online recruitment advertisements.This thesis applies the register theory to the translation of online recruitment advertisements for the first time. Halliday puts forward in the register theory that "the translator should take into consideration all of the three register variables, namely, filed, tenor and mode, and meanwhile, comprehensively analyze the context of situation of the source text in order to reproduce the register features of the original text in the target text, properly showing the corresponding field, tenor and mode, and finally, the equivalence of register between the original text and the target text get realized." This research attempts to employ scientific approach to explore how the register theory guides the translation of online Chinese recruitment advertisements. Thus, with the register theory as a guideline and online recruitment advertisements as the research object, this thesis adopts qualitative methodology and uses adequate data collected from the Internet to discuss how the register equivalence of the three variables are realized respectively in the translation of online recruitment advertisements. In the meantime, there exist some differences in register features between the online Chinese and English recruitment advertisements because of different languages and cultural backgrounds. As a result, it is sometimes difficult to reproduce the register features of the original text in the target text. All the data used in this thesis are collected from two professional recruitment websites: www.monster.com and www.51job.com. The former is the largest recruitment website in America while the latter is China’s most visited recruitment website. This thesis only chooses the newly released recruitment advertisements to ensure the objectivity and feasibility of this study.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter I gives the introduction of this thesis including the research background, aims and significance of the research, research methodology as well as the structure of the thesis. In Chapter II, the thesis examines the domestic and foreign studies on advertisement texts and advertisement translation as well as the previous studies on recruitment advertisements. Chapter III focuses on Halliday’s systematic-functional grammar, register theory, the three variables of register theory and the relation between register and the meta-functions of language. Chapter IV firstly introduces the general structure and functions of online recruitment advertisements, and examines the register features of online recruitment advertisements, and identifies different register features between online recruitment advertisements in Chinese and English. In addition, this chapter discusses about the application of register theory to the translation of online recruitment advertisements. Many recruitment advertisement translation cases will be presented in this chapter to identify the existing register-related translation problems and then explore how the register theory helps resolve these problems to create successful target texts. What’s more, this chapter also suggests some translation strategies of online recruitment advertisements. Chapter V concludes the major findings, points out the limitation of this study and provides suggestions for further studies.