Wang Li, Ang Lay Hoon, Gao Fumeng, Abdul Halim Hazlina
School of Foreign Languages, Fuyang Normal University, Fuyang, China.
Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia.
Humanit Soc Sci Commun. 2023;10(1):104. doi: 10.1057/s41599-023-01603-3. Epub 2023 Mar 14.
The corporate profile translations of multinational corporations (MNCs) in emerging economies such as China possess rich information for narrative analysis. Nevertheless, how the parts of a corporate profile translation form a whole narrative remains undertheorized. This study, therefore, examines the relationality of parts in the corporate profile translations of China's MNCs by integrating William Labov's narrative structure with Margaret Somers' narrative identity theory. Specifically, we conduct a theoretical thematic analysis of how constituents form a whole narrative in relevant corporate profiles, of the shifts in the relationality of parts from the Chinese source texts (STs) to the English target texts (TTs) of these profiles, and of the influences of these shifts on the constitution of corporate identities in the target texts. Our results show that in the corporate profiles of Chinese MNCs, episodes are not randomly selected and related to each other but follow predominant patterns. However, we find no unified patterns in the shifts in the relationality of parts via the corporate profile translation of China's MNCs. We thus reveal how corporations' identities are constituted in diverse ways that reflect their fluid and unique features. Accordingly, our findings have implications for translation studies and corporate communications.
在中国等新兴经济体中，跨国公司（MNCs）的企业简介翻译包含丰富的叙事分析信息。然而，企业简介翻译的各个部分如何构成一个完整的叙事，仍缺乏理论阐释。因此，本研究通过将威廉·拉波夫的叙事结构与玛格丽特·萨默斯的叙事身份理论相结合，探讨了中国跨国公司企业简介翻译中各部分之间的关联性。具体而言，我们对相关企业简介中各要素如何构成一个完整叙事、这些简介从中文源文本（STs）到英文目标文本（TTs）过程中各部分关联性的变化，以及这些变化对目标文本中企业身份构成的影响进行了理论主题分析。我们的研究结果表明，在中国跨国公司的企业简介中，情节并非随机选取且相互关联，而是遵循主要模式。然而，我们在中国跨国公司企业简介翻译中，未发现各部分关联性变化的统一模式。因此，我们揭示了企业身份如何以反映其动态和独特特征的多样方式构成。相应地，我们的研究结果对翻译研究和企业传播具有启示意义。
