On C-E Translation Of Corporate Annual Reports From The Perspective Of Text Typology

Against the backdrop of economic globalization,Chinese corporations are increasingly influential in the world,and many A-share corporations have also begun to write and release annual reports in English.English annual reports are important for A-share corporations to go abroad.They release annual reports to the world to increase their brand popularity,improve their global image and attract potential customers and investors overseas.Text Typology put forward by Katharina Reiss divides texts into three types: “informative”,“expressive” and “operative”,each of which should be translated with different strategies.An annual report should convey operational and financial information of a company and convince shareholders and customers that the company is performing well,so annual reports are both informative and operative.Based on Text Typology,this thesis analyzes the 2020 English annual reports of Gree,Midea,Suning and other corporations.The English annual reports of A-share corporations are all translated from their Chinese versions.However,the Chinese to English(hereafter referred to as C-E)translation of those annual reports needs to be improved.This thesis finds that inconsistency,ambiguity and mistranslation are the typical problems in translating accounting terms in financial statements and that transfer redundancy,poor readability and weak appellative function are the typical problems in translating off-statement information.This thesis combines Text Typology,the International Financial Reporting Standards(hereafter referred to as IFRS)and English annual reports of corporations listed in Chinese Hong Kong,America and Britain to analyze the above problems and put forward some principles which should be followed in the C-E translation of annual reports.Through analyses and discussions,this thesis suggests principles of “consistency”,“accuracy” and “clarity” in the translation of accounting terms,proposes principles of “brevity”,“logic” and “appeal” in the translation of off-statement information and points out that annual report translators should be equipped with financial knowledge and make full use of IFRS so as to enable corporate annual reports to perform the informative function and the appellative function.Only in this way,can English annual reports make a very positive contribution to the expansion of overseas business of A-share corporations.