The Dynamics of Language Contact in Intercultural Business Communication:

The Role of English as lingua franca in Translations of German Business Texts

Claudia BöttgerResearch Centre on Multilingualism

Hamburg University, Germany Vienna Business University, 11-12 June 2009

Text Optimising in Multilingual Business Communication

Transfer Project

- a global genre in transition

• most important means of communication

• ubiquitously available

• combines many different text types

• marked by standardisation process with respect to accounting standards

The annual report

Criticism of German annual reports

1. Lack of dialogue with stakeholders

2. Lack of CEO’s personal stance

3. Too much officialese

4. Too much retrospection, skepticism and too much fatalism

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Weaknesses of German annual reports

"Mal nutzen die Firmen ihre Geschäftsberichte zur Selbstdarstellung, ja zur platten Reklame, mal als Instrument zur Kommunikation mit den Mitarbeitern. Ihre Aktionäre, die Eigentümer, sprechen sie nur gelegentlich an." (manage magazin 2002: 162)

"Viele Vorstandsvorsitzenden verstecken sich hinter Zahlen und Hinweisen auf die schlechte Konjunktur, statt ihre persönliche Sicht der Dinge und ihren Teil der Verantwortung zu kommunizieren."

(Piwinger & Ebert 2002: 1 - 2)

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Weaknesses of German annual reports

"Leider lesen sich die meisten Vorworte als seien sie vom Oberbuchhalter einer Behörde verfaßt, nicht aber vom Vorstandsvorsitzenden einer Aktiengesellschaft." (manager magazin 203: 168)

"Während deutsche Unternehmen rückwärtsgewandt-skeptisch im Namen des Schicksals argumentieren, argumentieren die US Unternehmen viel stärker durch Verantwortungsbereitschaft, Aktivität und positives Denken." (Bolten 1996: 418)

German vs. US annual reports

German ARs are

• Debtor-oriented

• retrospective

• a report

US ARs are

• Creditor-oriented

• future-oriented

• a report and an image tool

Process of Americanisation

of financial communication

• Adoption of US American accounting standards

• Rise in the number and significance of English translations of German annual reports

• Application of US American annual reports as best practices for German annual reports

– especially in terms of how readers are addressed.

Research questions

• How does English as a global lingua franca impact on business communication

- in translations from English into German?

- in German source texts?

1. Research on ELF

2. Hypotheses

3. Methodological framework

4. Corpus

5. Disucssion of findings

6. Application of findings

Structure

• LFE - Medium of identity and communication Crystal (1997, 2004), Graddol (1997, 2003) Ammon (2001) Lüdi &

Theme (2002), Jenkins (2003), Seidlhofer (2009)• LFE and consequences for other languages Ammon (1989, 2001), Volz (1994), Knapp & Meierkord (2003),

Nickerson (2005), House (2008)• LFE and consequences for German-speaking business contexts Ammon (1996), Bungarten (1996), Vollstedt (2002), Böttger (2007) • Genre theory

Swales (1990), Bhatia (1992), Adamzik (2000), Swales & Feak (2004), Gillaerts & Gotti (2005)

Research on lingua franca English

Hypotheses

The dominance of English as the lingua franca of business communication effects that Anglophone text conventions are adopted

- to a higher degree in translations into German

- to a lesser degree in recent German source texts

• is applied to adapt source texts to target text expectations

(House 1997, 2003)

• builds on the following communicative preferences

Cultural filter

Communicative preferences German English

Indirectness Directness Implicitness Explicitness

Orientation to other / reader

Orientation to self / author

Interpersonal orientation Ideational orientation

Theoretical frameworks

• Subjectivity (Benveniste 1966; Langacker 1990; Smith 2000), • Perspective (Drescher & Gülich 1996; Sandig 1996), • Evidentiality (Chafe 1986), • Stance (Biber & Finnegan 1988), • Evaluation (Hunston & Thompson 2000), • Affect (Thompson & Hunston 2000), • Hedging (Hyland 1998b), • Appraisal (Martin 2001), • Metadiscourse (Crismore & Farnsworth 1990), • Intersubjectivity (White 2002, 2003),• Corporate Rhetoric (Hyland 1998).

Linguistic means and constructions

• Deixis, • Modality (modal verbs, adverbs, particles etc.), • Connectivity, • Sentence modi (declarative, exclamative, interrogative,

directive), • Matrix constructions with verba sentiendi and verba

dicendi,• Sentence adverbials, • Evaluative lexis.

Corpus

Diachronic translation corpus (1997-2008)Time frames AR: 1997-2000, 2001-04, 2005-07, 2008(at present approx 500.000 words) • Annual reports • Corporate Social Responsibility Reports• Newsletters• Corporate websites • Product presentations• Internal company communication

– Feedbackmanagement

Findings of diachronic analysis of German translations of

US original letters to shareholders

US letter to shareholders (IBM 2000)

II.1 Last year at this time, I said 2000 looked to be a year of great promise for us - as well as a year of great uncertainty.

(I was of the opinion...)

II.2 I said that, based on the way things were playing out in our industry - and in business in general […]

(This assessment was based on...)

Letztes Jahr um diese Zeit vertrat ich die Meinung, dass das Jahr 2000 für unser Unternehmen große Chancen, aber auch große Ungewissheiten berge.

Dieser Einschätzung lagen die Entwicklungen in unserer Branche und der Wirtschaft im Allgemeinen zugrunde. Darüber hinaus […]

US letter to shareholders (GE 2001)

2001 was a challenging but successful year for our Company.

We were tested by one of the most brutal global economies in decades, as well as by the impact of the tragedy of September 11.

Das Jahr 2001 war für unser Unternehmen ein hartes, aber erfolgreiches Geschäftsjahr.

Die zentralen Herausforder- ungen für uns resultierten zum einen aus einer globalen Wirtschaftslage, die zu den wahrhaft brutalsten der letzten Jahrzehnte gehörte, und zum anderen aus den Aus-wirkungen der tragischen Er-eignisse vom 11. September.

(The crucial challenges for us resulted from...)

US letter to shareholders (GE 2001)

But our business model works.

Aber auch unter diesen schwierigen Rahmen-bedingungen hat sich bestätigt, dass unser Geschäftsmodell überzeugend funktioniert.

(But even under these difficult overall conditions it was confirmed that our business models works convincingly.)

Findings of diachronic analysis of German originals and ELF translations of letters to shareholders

Diachronic analysis of German letter to shareholders HVB 1999

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

1999 war für uns ein hartes Jahr; es stand im Zeichen erheblicher Integrations-anstrengungen

Wir legten die Plattform für mehr Wachstum und Rentabilität und gehen nun deutlich gestärkt in das neue Jahr.

Dear Ladies and gentlemen,

1999 was a difficult year for

us, it was marked by considerable efforts of integration.

We laid the platform for growth and profitability and are now moving into the new year, visibly strengthened.

Diachronic analysis of Germanletter to shareholders HVB 2004

I.1 Meine sehr geehrten Damen und Herren, II.1 Das Jahr 2005 steht ganz im Zeichen Albert Einsteins, der vor 100 Jahren

seine berühmte Abhandlung über die Relativitätstheorie veröffentlichte. II.2 Von ihm stammt eine Einsicht, die ich gerne an den Anfang meiner

Ausführungen stellen möchte. II.3 "Manchmal kann das, was zählt, nicht gezählt werden, und das was

gezählt werden kann, zählt nicht.'' II.4 Was will ich damit sagen? II.5 Blicken wir doch gemeinsam zurück.II.6 In meinem letzten Brief an Sie sagte ich:II.7 ''Wir haben ein recht erfolgreiches Jahr hinter uns.''

Diachronic analysis of German letter to shareholders HVB 2004

I.1 Dear ladies and gentlemen, II.1 The year 2005 is the year of Albert Einstein, who published his

famous treatise about the theory of relativity 100 years ago. II.2 From him I have an insight, which I would like to put at the

beginning of my reflections. II.3 “Sometimes that which counts cannot be counted and that which

can be counted does not count.”II.4 What do I want to say by that?II.5 Let's look back together.II.6 In my previous letter to you I said: „Behind us lies quite a

successful year.“

Findings of diachronic analysis of German originals and ELF translations of letters to shareholders

Crisis communication

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Person deixis(German – English)

Vor diesem Hintergrund war es

unvermeidlich, die Weichen neu zu stellen.

/Against this background it was unavoidable...)

Against this background we had no alternative but to set a new course.

Letter to shareholder Telekom II.2 2006

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Modality(German – English)

Dies hat unter anderem dazu geführt, dass wir im traditionellen Festnetzgeschäft erhebliche Kunden- und Umsatzverluste verbuchen mussten.

(We had to take into account ...)

One consequence of this was that we lost large numbers of customer and a great deal of revenue in our traditional fixed-network business.

Letter to shareholder Telekom I.4 2006

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Person deixis (German original – English)

Die in der zweiten Jahreshälfte eingeführten neuen Tarifangebote zeigen erste gute Erfolge.

(The new calling plans launched in the second half of the year ....)

The new calling plans we launched in the second half of the year are starting to bear fruit.

Letter to shareholder Telekom III.1 2006

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Discussion of results

Hypotheses could be confirmed that on a diachronic level

• German translation adopt Anglophone text conventions more readily than

• German original texts.

• However, we need to take into account influencing

factors such as crisis communication.

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Transfer Group Multilingualism

• Funded by the German Research Council (March 2007 - February 2010)

Overall objective:

• to develop, evaluate and implement qualification modules – to cooperate with external partners from the institutions in

question – to apply linguistic findings from selected research projects at the

Research Centre – to feed the findings back into teaching at university level

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Transfer partners

Hamburger Geschäftsberichte GmbH & Co. KG Felizitas Peters (CEO) Jörg Korte (Director)

World2World GmbH Jim Blake (CEO)

Eike Katharina von Kleist (Latham & Watkins LLP, Translator/Writer)

Christina Blake (M. Sc. Public Relations)

Transfer through cooperation between university and industry

References

Böttger, C. (2007): Lost in Translation? An analysis of the role of English as a lingua franca in multilingual business communication. Hamburg: Kovac.

Bolten, J. (1999): Kommunikativer Stil, kulturelles Gedächtnis und Kommunikationsmonopole. In: H.K. Geißner et al. (ed.) Wirtschaftskommunikation in Europa. Tostedt, 113-131.

House, J. (1997): Translation Quality Assessment. A Model Revisited. Tübingen: Narr.

House, J. (2004): Explicitness in Discourse Across Languages. In: J. House, W. Koller and K. Schubert (eds.): Neue Perspektiven in der Übersetzungs- und Dolmetschwissenschaft. 185-208.Hyland, Ken (1998): Exploring Corporate Rhetoric: Metadiscourse in the CEO’s Letter. In: Journal of Business Communication, 35 (2), 224-245. White, Peter R.R. (2003): Beyond Modality and Hedging: A Dialogic View of the Language of Intersubjective Stance. In: Text 23 (2), 259-284.