Application Of The Wilss Theory In Translation Practice Of The Secret Of A Company's Success: Merger And Acquisition

The dissertation is a translation report by the author of this dissertation during her postgraduate study course.The translation is based on the source text(ST)of The secret of a Company's success:Merger and Acquisition(referred as “the book” hereafter)written by Suguru Miyake,a famous Japanese M&A(Merger and acquisition)adviser.The book is mainly about the benefits of M&A.Mr.Miyake shared his rich experience in M&A with numerous company cases,so as to allow amateurs to know the basic information about M&A.The book is classified as a professional book yet it differentiates with the pure professional type as its targeted readers are more amateurs.There are characteristics that requires to be noticed in translation,which are as followed: firstly,on vocabulary,Mr.Miyake tends to use simper and easier vocabulary except for M&A terminologies when necessary.Secondly,various figure of speech,e.g.metaphor and personification,are applied to create new phrases so as to make the book easy to understand.Thirdly,in terms of sentence structure,Mr.Miyake chooses simper structure to explain.In addition,the author uses question and various ways to shape a climate that he is chitchatting with readers.In conclusion,the book carries much more characteristics that worth studying and analyzing and provided that,the translation of this book cannot purely follow classic translation guidance.The translation methodology proposed by Wolfram Wilss,a German linguist,offers an appropriate way to proceed translation.Wilss holds the idea that translation is a lingual information transmission.To be elaborated,a translator has to realize the equivalence between Source Text(ST)and Target Text(TT)based on understanding of ST's content and style.To realize this task,a translator needs to clarify the main function of ST so as to apply different methods correspondingly;take ST,discourse and the readers into consideration;fully understand all the message,figure of speech pragmatic meaning and stylistics.These requirements provides practicable guidelines considering the style and characteristics of the book.Hence,the author of this dissertation would like to proceed the translation of the book by applying Wolfram Wilss' translation theory.Three chapters are included in the report.The first chapter focus on introducing Wolfram Wilss' translation theory and describing the possibility of taking the theory as a guideline to translate the ST.Wilss supposes that discourse is translatable and the definition of translation is to realize equivalence of ST and TT based on fully understanding of ST,which requires a translator: firstly,select the corresponding equivalence and translation method;secondly,keep the characteristics of ST and targeted reader in mind;thirdly,take the meaning,syntax and style as important basis for translation.In addition,Wolfram Wilss thinksthat a translator should not be 100% follow ST,however,he ought to carefully consider the equivalence on pragmatics and the reaction of TT's readers.Translating this book requires translators to apply different translation methodology flexibly.In conclusion,the features of ST,e.g.the sentence structure and style etc,with the focusing on equivalence on pragmatics,set a good example for applying Will's translation theory into practice,which can be regarded as a set of good guidance.The second chapter introduces Wolfram Wilss' translation theory use in the case of the book specifically,which includes three parts.First part is vocabulary.The author of this report analyses the cases of self-made words and words that has no fixed meaning in Chinese by using equivalence on pragmatics raised by Wolfram Wilss.Second part is to apply Wilss' idea on literal translation so as to deal with Japanese sentence structure issue,which is different from Chinese's.The third part is on the style of ST,how to realize the unique language style of ST in TT corresponding to Wilss' idea that translators should consider the intention of author of ST and readers and analyse if there is any targeted reader in author's mind.What worth mentioning is that in all three part,the translation follow the mode “decode-encode” by Wilss.The third chapter is about reviewing the book translation project.Wolfram Wilss' translation theory is able to offer a good guidance in dealing with vocabulary,sentence structure and overall style in translation,yet it has its limitation.An example in this case is that translation on terminology cannot fully follow Wilss' idea that translating according to its function in ST,therefore other methods have to be applied.This translation report focuses on the translation process of The secret of a Company's success:Merger and Acquisition and makes a conclusion and comprehensive review on practical use of translation theory.The author of this translation report hopes that improvements can be made in realizing a translation work in high quality.