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Translation Universals in Translated CEO Letters in Sustainability Reports

  • The Journal of Translation Studies
  • Abbr : JTS
  • 2019, 20(5), pp.131-162
  • DOI : 10.15749/jts.2019.20.5.006
  • Publisher : The Korean Association for Translation Studies
  • Research Area : Humanities > Interpretation and Translation Studies
  • Received : November 3, 2019
  • Accepted : December 15, 2019
  • Published : December 31, 2019

Yim, Jin 1

1이화여자대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study sheds light on Translation Universals in translated CEO letters in sustainability reports, which have been receiving growing attention under the new regulatory environment and recently-rising practice of integrated reporting. Taking a comparable corpus approach by coding 58 translated and non-translated letters published by KTOP30- and DOW30-listed firms with 31 variables representing four translation universals (explicitation, simplification, normalization, and levelling-out), it is found that letters translated from Korean into English exhibit significantly lower function words, lower connectives, and higher mean sentence length, all of which contradict to the existing TU hypotheses. The result of normalization is in line with the TU hypothesis where translated texts have a higher proportion of recurring lexical bundles. Also found is significant underrepresentation of punctuations in translated CEO letters. All of the differences in this study, whether conforming to TU hypotheses or not, reveal the influence of the corporate reporting genre as well as source language. This has meaningful implications for translation from L1 to L2, which is often the norm for professional translators in this genre in Korea.

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