Corporate social responsibility reports

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documents to marketing texts. Moreover, large corporations tend to entrust the translation of their CSR reports into other languages to localization companies because it is a complicated task which requires specialized (1) resources (e.g., multi-lingual translator resources), (2) expertise (e.g., knowledge and skills regarding desktop publishing and web content management), and (3) tools (e.g., CAT⁴ tools and desktop publishing tools). More importantly, high-quality translation is expected.

QTLaunchPad was a European Commission-funded collaborative research initiative (2012-2014) dedicated to preparing the grounds for a new type of systematic research and cooperation between MT developers and language industries for overcoming quality barriers in MT and HT using language technologies. It addresses quality translation on its landing page in the following terms.

High-quality translation is in greater demand today than ever before . . . . Despite considerable progress in machine translation (MT), which has enabled many new applications for automatic translation, the quality barriers for outbound translations (i.e., translations to be published or distributed outside of an organization) have not yet been overcome. As a result, the volume of translation today fall far short of what is needed for optimal business operations and legal requirements. (QTLaunchPad, n.d.)

CSR reports produced by large-scale Japanese enterprises are representative of a content type that requires quality translation but is inhibited by sub-optimal processes.

The following examples of JA texts and their published EN translations exemplify the features of CSR reports and the consequent poor quality of their translations. The company names are anonymized as “XXX” and “YYY” as applicable.

4 A CAT tool is a computer-based system for processing natural language, providing elements such as an electronic multilingual lexicon, or translation memory, as an aid to a human translator.

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Example 1-1 Sample CSR sentence and its published EN translation JA: 化学物質リスク管理規則では、環境と人体に著しい影響を与える化学物質と

して国際条約や国内外の法規制により禁止物質とされたものを「XXX 含有禁 止物質」とし、含有量・用途範囲を制限する物質として「XXX含有制限物質」、

使用の削減・代替を推進する物質として「XXX 含有監視物質」と定め、原料 採用から製品に至る含有物質を管理し、XXX グループ全体の管理基準として 標準化しています。

EN: In the Chemical Risk Management Regulations, chemicals that are prohibited by international treaties or laws/regulations of Japan or other countries because of their significant impact on the environment and human bodies are specified as XXX Prohibited Chemicals. Chemicals with restrictions on their presence or scope of use are defined as XXX Restricted Chemicals, while those whose reduced use or replacement shall be promoted are specified as XXX Monitored Chemicals. We manage chemicals contained in raw materials and products in accordance with these regulations, which we set as management standards for the entire XXX.

Example 1-2 Sample CSR sentence and its published EN translation

JA: その時、従来の「養豚」「飼育」に加えて、「と畜」まで自社で一貫して行えば、

他にはない管理体制で差別化・競争力を高めることができ、品質の向上にもつな がると考え、豚肉加工工場を所有することを決断。

EN: Realizing that by adding slaughter operations to their current production and breeding operations they could establish an unparalleled management system to distinguish themselves and increase both their competitiveness and quality, the company decided to open a pork meat processing plant.

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Example 1-3 Sample CSR sentence and its published EN translation

JA: 階層別の研修では、多くの従業員を巻き込み目標へ向けて個々の能力を最大限に 引き出す"主管職"と、グループやチーム全体を管理し革新的なプロセスと成果を 創出する"管理職"といった役割にあわせたプログラムを実施し、従業員のチャレ ンジを促進しサポートする能力向上に取り組んでいます。

EN: In hierarchical training courses, special programs are respectively developed for

"supervisors" who are to bring out maximum ability of individual employees toward our objectives by encouraging many of them and the "managers" who control their groups and the whole team to create innovative processes and results. XXX has thus been committed to enhance employees' ability to facilitate and support the challenges by them.

Based on the three functions of language (informative, expressive, and appellative) identified by Bühler (1934/1965), Reiss (1977/1989) categorizes text types (or genres) into four types: informative (content-focused), expressive (form-focused), operative (appeal-focused), and audio-media (complemented by other media) texts.

When a text features the characteristics of more than one text type, it is regarded as a

“hybrid” type (Munday, 2016, p. 116). As shown in the examples above, a CSR report is informative in that it transmits information regarding the company which produced the CSR report: Example 1-1 explains the Chemical Risk Management Regulations, Example 1-2 introduces the background why a pork meat processing plant was established, and Example 1-3 describes the hierarchical training courses. But equally it fulfills the operative function by attempting to earn trust from the readers, promoting the companies’ products or services, and attracting investment. Thus, the text type of CSR reports is justifiably considered as hybrid.

What also can be observed from the examples is the poor readability and understandability of the published EN translations. The JA texts are overly long in

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general with a complex sentence structure. Lommel (2018b, pp. 1-6) offers a possible explanation in observing that, (1) EN texts, particularly those authored by American writers, tend to be highly deductive in the sense that they state a desired outcome, organize supporting evidence in a systematic fashion, and then recap the initial point of the text, while Japanese writers, on the contrary, tend to lay out conditions that lead the reader to a conclusion; (2) westerners often find JA texts unclear, while Japanese may view texts in European languages to be pedantic and overly direct; and (3) JA is not precise in some grammatical aspects where European languages demand exactness.

Lommel (2018b, p. 2) further observes that it is actually the norm for many Japanese enterprises to author an EN document separate from their domestic version for translation into other languages as it is easier to find translators who work with EN source content and also useful to avoid the negative impact resulting from the linguistic differences between JA and EN. This so-called “norm” would be an ideal process if a company can find authors who are familiar with the company’s product or service and are trained to write for a global audience. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Based on the present author’s observation, most large Japanese companies provide poorly written EN content as STs for LSPs to further translate into multiple languages, inevitably resulting in time-consuming query handling in the process (as translators may need to ask for clarification of STs) and poor translation in the end (as translators tend to translate the STs word-by-word when the STs are difficult to understand). Rather than creating an entirely different version of the source document which may not be able to serve the intended purpose, this study proposes a pre-editing framework that can provide a feasible alternative.

The reasons why CSR reports are taken as the research data are first their hybridity, and second the statutory requirement for Japanese corporations to publish them annually. Moreover, since they are publicly available with back numbers, research based on a substantial corpus becomes feasible. Besides, the present author has a

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professional familiarity with the genre. Finally, features of the CSR reports are representative of the problems in hybrid texts. Therefore, the findings built on the analysis of CSR reports can be useful for hybrid texts in general.

ZH-CN translations of JA CSR reports being the subject, this research fits the definition of a case study. Yin (2009, p. 18) defines a case study as “an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon in depth and within its real-life context.”

This study focuses on official ZH-CN translations of JA CSR reports published by major Japanese companies—thus a real-life phenomenon—and conducts corpus- and text-based experiments to provide statistical evidence which might justify the generalizability of the study. Saldanha and O'Brien (2014, p. 209) point out that case studies belong to the group of qualitative research methods that can make contributions to knowledge beyond the particular in three different scenarios: (1) in exploring questions of how and why, (2) for hypothesis generating (as opposed to hypothesis testing), and (3) for testing the viability of a theoretical framework, or in order to test the limits of more established ones.

This case study fits the first and the third scenarios as it aims to answer the research questions stated in Section 1.3, and attempts to explore and expand existing frameworks regarding error annotation schemes and JA-based controlled languages.