A Study On The C-E Translation Of E-commerce Company Profiles From The Perspective Of The Adaptation Theory

With the speed-up of the economic globalization,the economic exchanges between China and other countries have become more and more frequent,which consequently stimulates the development of both traditional and new foreign trade business.Cross-border e-commerce,as a new business model,makes global business transactions easier and faster,but it also faces a lot a challenges.One of the biggest challenges is the on-line website constructions,especially company profile translation.A Company profile functions as a resume of the company,and covers a lot of important information,such as product features,advantages,production scale,market information,and the company's future plan.Therefore,the translation quality of a company profile will determine a company's popularity and success to some extent.Unfortunately,there are many mistakes existing in the English versions of company profiles on the e-commerce platforms which greatly affect the company's cyber image.What's more,the theoretical researches on the translation of cross-border e-commerce company profiles(henceforth abbreviated to CECPs)are inadequate,which consequently calls for deeper and more systematic studies in this area.This thesis will take the C-E company profile translations on Alibaba.com as the research target,and adopt Verschueren's Adaptation Theory as a theoretical guidance.It will discuss in depth the application of the Adaptation Theory to the C-E translation of CECPs,and hopes to shed some new light on and provide both practical and theoretical guide to the C-E translation of CECPs.Verschueren's Adaptation theory can provide comprehensive explanations for translation and is of great practical value.According to Verschueren,Language usage is a continuous choice-making process.The reason why language users can make correct choices is that language has variability,negotiability and adaptability,which construct the basic elements of language usage.There are four investigation angles for linguistic studies,they are contextual correlates of adaptability,structural objects of adaptability,dynamics of adaptability and salience of the adaptation processes.Translation,as a bi-lingual,cross-culture activity should also be investigated from these four angles.Therefore,during the process of the C-E translation of CECPs,the translator should make choices both in the interpreting of the source text and in the generating of the target text consciously or automatically,and should make dynamic adaptations to both the structures and contexts,so as to reach communication success.This thesis will study the process of the C-E translation of CECPs from the above four investigation angles.It is hoped that it can provide a coherent and clear theoretical guide as well as a practical translation model for the C-E translation of CECPs.