E-C Translation Of Business Biography From The Perspective Of Koller’s Equivalence Theory

Translation equivalence has long been the main objective of translation practice.Western translation theorists and linguists have provided different interpretations of the concept,leading equivalence theory to become one of the core concepts in Western translation theory.As research deepens,translators are now able to employ equivalence theory to test whether a translation practice has achieved equivalence or not,or utilize the equivalence theory to guide their translation practice.Recently published by Politikens Forlag in Denmark,Life in Lego is a biographical work that offers an extensive description of LEGO’s development process,corporate culture,and management philosophy spanning over a century.With its substantial and unique development history,the text presents great value for studying enterprise development and biographical translation.This report adopts Werner Koller’s equivalence theory framework,using Chapter 5 of Life in Lego as a practical text to explore how equivalence can be achieved at different levels.Koller divides equivalence into five levels,namely denotative,connotative,text-normative,pragmatic,and formal equivalence.At the denotative level,lexical vacancies about proper nouns in business biographies present a challenging translation task,requiring the adoption of the transplantation,literal translation,or annotation method under the one-to-zero equivalence model.Additionally,professional titles in businesses often belong to the category of one-to-many equivalence and this type of translation cannot be blurred,necessitating the selection of precise word based on the duties,occasions,and verbal communication between characters to achieve accuracy and authenticity.When dealing with connotative equivalence,the translator differentiates oral,epistolary,and ordinary language styles to reproduce the texts’ varied style.In the case of text-normative equivalence,both literariness and authenticity represent significant standards that restrict the entire translation process.In the event of conflicts occurring in equivalence at different levels,the primary consideration is balancing these two standards and pragmatic equivalence.At the pragmatic equivalence level,a business biography serves the purpose of promoting the enterprise and convincing readers to buy its products.This demands that the translator could recognize appropriate translation techniques and adapt the sentence structure of the text to produce a more effective translation that can be readily understood by the target audience.Finally,in addressing the literariness of the biographical text,the translator explores the rhetorical representation in both form and content.The translation method adopted involves retaining the original rhetorical form,replacing it with the rhetoric in the target language,and leveraging the translator’s subjectivity for recreation,thereby achieving formal aesthetic equivalence.