Analysis Of Explicitation In English Translation Of Chinese Investment Environment Reports

Chinese investment environment reports provide facts about the advantages of investing in certain cities or regions in China to help potential investors make wiser decisions.According to Newmark’s functional theory of language,these reports are informative texts whose core function is to deliver messages.The Chinese language,however,features a tendency of structural and logical implicatation.And the cultural differences existing behind the texts also pose a challenge to English translators of such investment environment reports.Explicitation is a practical translation strategy to render a translated text in a way more explicitly and easier to be understood by readers of the target language,or English in this case.This strategy,if used skillfully by a competent translator,usually works well to improve the readability and fluency,and in many cases even the accuracy,of the translated text,especially when it is an informative text.This thesis is a case study on the English translation projects of a series of Chinese investment environment reports contracted by Deloitte,a professional financial management firm,that the author completed as part of her MTI training program.It discusses what the concept of explicitation involves and why it is needed in these translation projects and then proposes some specific techniques of using the explicitation strategy to cope with the tendency of implicitation commonly seen in the Chinese reports to be translated.After describing the main functions of the original texts,the thesis defines explicitation as a translation strategy that includes both adding logical connectives and clarifying the implied meaning.It also analyzes language structural and cultural differences need to be dealt with in bilingual translation.Based on a case study of examples that the author believes can typically show the significance of using the explicitation strategy,the author tentatively proposes some specific techniques for using this strategy in the projects discussed: using prepositions,converting the noun into another part of speech,specifying the subject of a sentence,adding logical connectives,emphasizing the key information through reasonable word order,and explicitly expressing the underlying messages in the context.