This handbook is intended for university students engaged in studying theoretical and practical aspects of specialized communication and translation of professional texts. It deals with the problems of translation from English into Russian and is designed to assist the students of English Department in applying their theoretical knowledge to practical work. The aim of this handbook is to focus on those areas of the English grammar and special features of English texts for specific purposes which create difficulties and problems for an average student translator.

The present handbook is divided into six sections which cover a range of specific text types widely used in the contemporary professional communication. These include:

Business Letters;
Genres of Business Newspapers;
Commercials Advertisements;
Press Releases;
Corporate and Financial Statements;
Legal Documents.

Part II of this handbook is supplied with a broad theoretical background on a number of special topics related to English professional texts. Students are provided with essential information on content, composition, stylistic and linguistic dimensions of commercial advertisements, corporate statements and legal documents widely used in the sphere of business, advertising and law. The present handbook has a collection of exercises on specific problems of translation of professional texts for business, law and finance from English into Russian. Key features of the handbook are authentic texts from the Financial Times, Business Central Europe, Central European Economic Review and other professional sources, up-to-date business topics and issues, and comprehensive language and skills practice.

Section One – Advertisements and Commercials

Theoretical Background

Advertising has become an integral part of our present-day life. From everywhere around us, advertisements of diverse types attack our privacy.

Defined very generally, advertising is ‘the business of encouraging people to buy goods by means of advertisements’ [Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 1992:15]. In a contemporary world there exist various types of advertising. Commercial consumer advertising is directed towards a mass audience with the aim of promoting sales of individual products or services. Industrial or trade advertising seeks to promote products/services produced or rendered by a particular company to other firms. The prestige advertising aims to promote the name and the positive image of a specific company rather than products or services, while the so-called classified advertising deals with want ads and house sales.

Advertising messages can be distributed via a variety of communication channels. From this perspective it seems reasonable to distinguish such forms of advertising as print advertising, Internet advertising, direct mail advertising, radio advertising, TV advertising, etc. [for more details see Фещенко 2003]. Advertisements on television and radio are technically known as commercials.

Advertisements are specific text types used for advertising products and services have been discussed at length in many publications. Recent studies have for the most part analyzed advertising discourse [Лейчик 2006; Cook 2001], stylistic features [Курганова 2004; Galperin 1981], structural peculiarities [Фещенко 2003], writing techniques and strategies [Алексеева 2004; Зарецкая 2004; Чернышова 2008; Crystal 1998], metaphors [Кушнерук 2007], manipulation strategies [Аникин 2008; Попова 2005; Чумичева 2009], gender peculiarities [Гампер 2009] and cultural differences of advertising texts [Братчикова, Лизина 2002; Тер-Минасова 2007]. Investigations were carried out in a variety of domains ranging from food product and motor car ads [Соловьева 2002; Усачева 2004; Шаззо 2008] to ads produced for the promotion of books and mobile communications [Кириленко 2004; Леонтьева 1994]. In general, most studies were based on printed advertising texts, although several papers were aimed at reviewing specific features of advertising messages placed by companies at their corporate websites [Егорова 2008].

It should be emphasized that commercial advertisements are usually organized in accordance with the so-called AIDA principle and must attract the Attention of the prospective buyer, maintain his or her Interest, create a Desire, and get him or her into Action. Commercial advertisements have a fixed compositional structure and include the following components:

1. the slogan – a striking and easily remembered phrase used to make a specific ad more impressive and memorable. The basic purpose of an advertising slogan is to attract the reader’s attention to the advertisement of a particular company. For example: A Korea Banking Hercules – The Citizens National Bank. It is interesting to note that many slogans are based on stylistic devices. For instance, alliteration can help the slogan achieve the strong beating rhythm needed to make it a repeatable sentence - the Allied Irish Bank: Britain’s best business bank;

2. the advertising message itself which either suggests reasonable motives for a purchase or appeals to emotions of an addressee. The appeal to make a purchase may be either direct or implicit [Cook 2001];

3. the feedback section aimed at building up contacts with the prospective customers (e.g. For more information do not hesitate to contact us at tel. (043) 366-567);

4. contact details, including phone and fax numbers, e-mail and corporate web-site particulars.

Advertising texts are constructed on ‘a problem – solution’ relation. In particular, this scenario is regularly exploited by financial advertisers. For example: If you need money (a problem!) we are here to provide you with a loan or a credit card (a solution!).

Many advertisements refer to the reader with the second person pronoun ‘you’ in order to shorten the distance between the product or the producer and consumers. The use of possessive pronoun ‘your’ is also a common strategy in English-language ads and commercials allowing the advertiser to build up a close relationship with prospective consumers. The cultivation of a personal relationship is enhanced by the advertiser’s anaphoric use of ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’. The communicative strategy of personalization enables the advertiser to create an atmosphere of solidarity or intimacy whereby the reader seems to be advised by a friend [Grabovski 2007; Painter 2001]. For example: If you’re considering new business in Indonesia, you’ll want the counsel of a bank that really knows the country.

The language of advertising is generally laudatory, positive and unreserved. Advertisers try to emphasize the uniqueness of a product [Crystal 1998]. The best advertisers prefer to communicate with the target audience in the customer’s language rather than in the industry’s language. To spend money on advertising that customers do not understand makes no sense whatsoever. Stark, basic, understandable communications are especially important in financial services advertising as an antidote to the growing complexity of these services [Donnelly, Berry, Thompson 1985].

The vocabulary of English ads is vivid and concrete. I.R. Galperin states that the vocabulary tends to be neutral with here and there a sprinkling of emotionally colored words or phrases used to attract the reader’s attention [for more details see Гальперин 1981]. These special attention-getting devices include:

- superlative adjectives which emphasize the uniqueness of a particular product (e.g. the strongest international balance sheet, the most profitable private banking institution, the highest international standards of speed, accuracy and discretion, the very highest standards of confidentiality and trust, etc.) and various intensifiers like very, extremely and exceptionally (e.g. Vladi Private Islands has been the top-selling company for island sales and rentals since 1975. It has the largest archive worldwide with more than 12000 files of islands explorations collected over 30 years and has sold over 2000 islands);

- Commercial ads abound in hyperbolic adjectives like great, grandiose and excellent and in epithets like fresh, delicious, beautiful, ideal, excellent, unforgettable, first-class, etc. (e.g. For more than 20 years The United States Hot Air Balloon Team, led by veteran Stan Hess, has provided first-class adventure for travelers throughout the United States, Europe and Asia). In his famous study on English-language advertising G.N. Leech managed to make up a list of twenty most frequent adjectives employed by people in the advertising profession. This list includes such common adjectives as new, good/better/best, free, fresh, full, wonderful, special, fine, big, great, real, easy and rich, to name a few [Leech 1966];

- intensifying prefixes, such as ultra-, super-, extra-, hyper- (e.g. supernatural, ultrashining, etc.);

- words, such as ‘every’ and ‘always’, are often used in ads and commercials to stress the universal application of a particular product (e.g. Always Coca-Cola);

- words and phrases marked by emotional coloring (an expert, a master, top, leading, an outstanding track record, an exceptional service, etc.), metaphorical and figurative expressions (eating sunshines – cereals, smiling color – hair shampoo);

- foreign words are used in ads and commercials to emphasize the origin of the product or exclusiveness of the product in relation to a particular country. For instance, a French word ‘crème’’ evokes the impression of world-class French cosmetics in an advertising slogan La crème de la crème of lipcolour;

- novel compound words (e.g. top-quality, all-purpose, on-line, etc.);

- specially coined words which constitute, probably, the most noticeable feature of advertising language. Many instances of this kind can be found in Russian advertising texts: ПОРА ПЕЖОНИТЬ! (реклама автомобиля «Пежо»); Хватит мечтать, пора ОБLADAТЬ! (реклама автомобиля «Лада»);

- intertextual elements and allusion to some other texts (e.g. “To be in Florida in winter or not to be in Florida in winter?” is an allusion to Shakespeare’s famous piece from Hamlet “To be or not to be? That is the question”. The advertising slogan “A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play” is an allusion to a well-known English proverb “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”).

Syntactical structures which aim at attaching additional emotional coloring to advertising texts range from parallel constructions and stylistic inversion to elliptical and imperative constructions. Parallel constructions are termed as two or more neighboring sentences or parts of a single sentence marked by the identical syntactical pattern. Yu.M. Skrebnev states that the stylistic device of parallelism is suitable for performing a variety of functions, such as a rhythmic and melodic unification of adjacent sentences, a logical stress on a certain repeated element, etc. [Skrebnev 1994]. Parallel constructions are rather favored by contemporary copywriters. For example: Reporting on new ideas, shaping our everyday world.

The device of stylistic inversion aims to attach an additional emotional or expressive coloring to the surface meaning of the utterance by exploiting a non-standard arrangement of words in a sentence [Арнольд 2005; Galperin 1981]. The inverted word-order can enable a copywriter to emphasize a key word by placing it into a very prominent first position in the utterance. For example: Essential is an expert, committed partner. The word ‘essential’ in the above sentence sounds very strong and emphatic due to its unusual position in the sentence where the predicative stands before the link-verb and both are placed before the subject.

Elliptical constructions which are also regularly found in advertising texts are used as imitations of oral speech with a view to make advertising slogans and texts more dynamic and expressive and to support a conversationalization strategy employed by the advertiser. For example: In the world of financial consulting there are a lot of players. But few masters.

Imperatives as a stylistic device help copywriters create an atmosphere of emotional suspense in the advertising text and visualize the described situation by producing the effect of presence. For example: Step abroad World Yacht, New York’s premiere dining cruise. Indulge in outstanding cuisine, receive attentive and gracious service from our international stuff, and marvel at the dazzling city views. ... Sip on champagne while your journey takes you down the Hudson River, around the tip of Manhattan and up the East River.

Other prominent syntactical devices used in English ads and commercials are listed below:

- a stylistic device of repetition aims to place a logical stress on a particular key-word of two or more sentences in a row (e.g. Europay provides a full range of payment services. … Europay provides a single technical infrastructure which delivers all Europay services through one system);

- parcelling constructions which allow copywriters to emphasize each segment of a sentence due to a very peculiar punctuation model (e.g. Schneider is a manufacturer focused on electrical equipment, control equipment and automation. With four world brands: Merlin Gerin, Modicon, Square D and Telemecanique. And over 60,000 specialists in 130 countries, with one objective in mind: to meet your needs. Every day. Safely. Economically. Efficiently.);

- a wide occurrence of exclamatory sentences, especially in ads and commercials aimed at female audiences (e.g. Crystal lipcolour. It’s music for your lips!);

- inexplicit grammatical constructions which give an air of vagueness to the claims for the product (e.g. X costs less than what?); X gets clothes cleaner (than what?). Similar examples can be easily found in ads and commercials - Ford has a better idea – FORD MOTOR COMPANY; Get more – T-Mobile; If you ask us, it just tastes better – Burger King [for more details see Аникин 2008];

- Rhetorical questions which assume only one possible answer are used to attract attention of potential customers by mentioning the matter that concerns them most of all. Questions are also resorted to by a copywriter to promote closer contact with the audience (e.g. Developing your activities in Central and Eastern Europe? Have you driven a Ford lately?). Sometimes questions are selected by an advertiser to make up a backbone of a particular ad. A good example of this kind can be found in [Шутова 2003]. The advertisement of a well-known car producer runs as follows:

Will you turn the corner? Or keep heading down the same road?

Will you go the next mile? Or be content to travel in the same circles?

Today technology is pressing on.

Aren’t you just a little curious what’s over the next hill?

What’s new in your world?

This advertisement is full of questions and such syntactical organization of the text seems to make the ad more dynamic and expressive;

holophrastic constructions which help the advertiser express a complex of

ideas in a single word (e.g. a ‘special-services-provided-by-special-people’ boutique, a live-work-shop-play-and-also-do-your-banking card, services for ‘I-am-an-individual’ clients);

creative utterances constructed by a copywriter to attract the reader’s

attention (e.g. Of course, when it comes to your questions, you’ll find our ears positively elephantine; ‘To manage 3,000 rooms, you undoubtedly need a good many vacuum-cleaners but also a highly imaginative and innovative bank’).

All the above-mentioned stylistic devices are coupled with special graphical means, such as words in bold type or iconic signs which also help advertisers make their ads original and memorable. For example: Welcome to the world of Sony: music, movies, TV, games and electronics; Let’s combine our talent$. Commercial ads are increasingly accompanied by visual images such as photographs and drawings. Advertising texts make use of a number of different modes (words in headlines; images and the written texts themselves) to form a composite whole and are therefore referred to as multimodal texts [for more details see Анисимова 2003; Полубиченко, Донская 2007; Cook 2001; Stenglin, Iedema 2001]. Other examples of multimodal texts include newspaper and magazine articles, operating manuals, film reviews, tourist brochures, cooking recipes and all sorts of reports.

Suggested Topics for Discussion

What can you say about the compositional structure of English commercials advertisements?
What can you say about the lexical items used in English commercial advertisements?
What can you say about syntactical peculiarities of English commercial advertisements?
Why are English commercial advertisements referred to as multimodal texts?

Translation Practice

Text 1 – An Advertisement of a Dining Cruise

Step aboard World Yacht, New York’s premiere dining cruise. Indulge in outstanding cuisine, receive attentive and gracious service from our international staff, and marvel at the dazzling city views. New American cuisine with a French influence serves as the basis for World Yacht’s seasonal four-course menu, accompanied by a carefully selected list of wines and cocktails. Sip on champagne while your journey takes you down the Hudson River. Sail under the Brooklyn Bridge and marvel at the close-up views of the majestic Statue of Liberty. World Yacht … is the best way to see New York.

(Source: Offers to Premium MasterCard Cardholders 2007)

Comprehension Questions

1. What is the best dining cruise in New York?

Practical Assignments

Exercise 1. Analyze types of stylistic devices used in the text and suggest ways of rendering the text into Russian.

Exercise 2. Explain how the self-presentation strategy of the advertiser is realized in the above advertisement.

Exercise 3. Read and translate the text.

Text 2 – An Advertisement of a Restaurant

Cala Restaurante is located on the ocean’s edge in the historic and fashionable Barranco district of Lima, Peru. A lively first-floor bar offers a variety of cocktails, plus tasty seafood appetizers such as popcorn shrimps and irresistible spicy shellfish. The restaurant located upstairs boasts attentive service and a varied menu including seafood, as well as duck, lamb, and pasta offerings. Desserts are truly tempting, and the selection of wines is carefully coordinated with the menu. Views of the sea enhance this fine dining experience.

(Source: Offers to Premium MasterCard Cardholders 2007)

Comprehension Questions

1. Where is Cala Restaurante located at?

Practical Assignments

Exercise 1. Analyze types of stylistic devices used in the text and suggest ways of rendering the text into Russian.

Exercise 2. Explain how a positive image of Cala Restaurante is created in the above advertisement.

Exercise 3. Read and translate the text.

Text 3 - Want To Unlock Some Doors in Indonesia?

We have the keys. In fact, we’ve been helping international business with trade financing for nearly two decades. Bringing together major companies from around the world, providing accurate, up-to-date information and maintaining the very highest standards of confidentiality and trust.

If you’re considering new business in Indonesia, you’ll want the counsel of a bank that really knows the country. A bank with a truly global reach. With branches in eighteen cities across Indonesia plus links to correspondent banks in 67 countries around the world.

You simply couldn’t choose a better banking partner in Indonesia than Bank Niaga – a strong internationally-minded bank with the keys to those doors. Call up today!

(Source: The Banker, No. 807/1993)

Comprehension Questions

1. Why is the Bank Niaga the best banking partner in Indonesia?

Practical Assignments

Exercise 1. Analyze types of stylistic devices used in the text and suggest ways of rendering the text into Russian.

Exercise 2. What is the slogan of this advertisement? Does it sound as attention-getting and memorable?

Exercise 3. Explain what linguistic means are employed in the above advertisement to shorten a distance between the advertiser and prospective customers.

Exercise 4. Read and translate the text.

Text 4 - We Oil the Wheels of Siberia

The West-Siberian Commercial Bank was transformed into the Joint-Stock Commercial Bank from the former state-governed PROMSTROIBANK in November 1990.

The Bank’s shareholders include the largest Siberian state enterprises namely, URENGOYGAZPROM, YAMBURGGAZDOBYCHA, NIZHNEVARTOVSKNEFTEGAZ, NADYMGAZPROM, TYUMENSNABCOMPANY, along with the TOBOLSK PETROCHEMICAL INTEGRATED WORKS. The shareholders are also involved in building companies and various business projects in the Tyumen Region, Russia’s basic oil and gas province.

The West-Siberian Commercial Bank has 28 branches in Siberia which provide high-quality financial services for 55,000 customers. At present, more than 1,200 employees work at the head office and its branches. The Bank’s Authorized Capital now stands at 1 billion rubles, so far the Bank’s assets and credits have reached 270 and 56 billion rubles, respectively.

The West-Siberian Commercial Bank is now heavily involved in international banking, and it deals directly with correspondent banks from Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Great Britain and the USA.

The Bank has already gained wide experience in financing the major Siberian projects in power engineering, the oil and gas industry and other Russian key industries. It has also set up the financing of the SAMOTLOR, URENGOY, YAMBURG, MEDVEZHYE oil and gas fields, the construction of power stations, pipelines and other industrial projects of the Tyumen Oil and Gas Complex.

Today, the West-Siberian Commercial Bank is conducting the current share issuing campaign in order to increase its Authorized Capital to 5 billion roubles.

(Source: Passport into New World)

Key Terms

authorized capital уставной капитал (банка, компании)

correspondent bank банк-корреспондент

credit кредит, заем (to extend ~ выдать кредит, to refuse smb. ~ отказать кому-л. в кредите, a bank ~ банковский кредит, a consumer ~ потребительский кредит, a government ~ правительственный кредит)

state-governed bank государственный банк

Word Combinations

to conduct a share-issuing campaign проводить компанию по выпуску собственных акций

to finance projects in power engineering финансировать проекты в области электроэнергетики

Comprehension Questions

1. When was the West-Siberian Commercial Bank established?

2. What is the advertising slogan of the West-Siberian Commercial Bank? What do you think about this advertising slogan?

3. What is the abbreviated name of the West-Siberian Commercial Bank?

4. Does the West-Siberian Commercial Bank conduct international banking transactions?

6. How many branches does the West-Siberian Commercial Bank have in Siberia?

Practical Assignments

Exercise 1. Give suitable Russian equivalents to the following phrases from the original text (other Russian key industries; to provide high-quality financial services; Russia’s basic oil and gas province; the Bank’s Authorized Capital now stands at 1 billion rubles; the construction of power stations and pipelines; we oil the wheels of Siberia).

Exercise 2. Find the passive forms in the text and translate them into Russian.

Exercise 3. Does the West-Siberian Commercial Bank rely on emotions or facts to attract new customers to the Bank? Prove your point of view.

Exercise 4. Read and translate the text.

Text 5 – A Specimen of a Job Advertisement

(1) We require an experienced financial consultant/manager to work with our multinational clients in searching highly-skilled specialists for their senior financial positions. (2) The successful candidate will have experience at a senior level with the Big Six or in industry. (3) An ability to communicate effectively at board level will be required. (4) This position will suit an experienced professional who prefers a consultancy role within a team environment.

Recruitment International is a market leader in Central Europe with aggressive expansion plans in place. The opportunities for advancement within the group are excellent. Experience in executive search and selection, whilst an advantage, is not essential as full training will be given.

Please send a detailed CV to Elwyn Williams, Group Managing Director at Recruitment International (fax 0042022051, e-mail riexec@recruitment.cz).

(Source: Business Central Europe, No.45/1997)

Key Terms

a detailed CV подробное резюме

financial consultant консультант по финансовым вопросам

executive search поиск работников руководящего звена

recruitment комплектование кадрами, подбор кадров

Word Combinations

to communicate effectively at board level умение эффективно строить отношения с менеджерами высшего звена

the Big Six “большая шестерка”: шесть крупнейших фирм мира, специализирующихся в области аудита и консалтинга (Arthur Andersen & Co., Coopers & Lybrand, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG Peat Marvick, Price Waterhouse & Co.)

Practical Assignments

Exercise 1. Which word fits each of the following definitions?

advancement having to do with managing and having

authority to carry out decisions

professional a person doing smth. as a full-time occupation

or for payment or to make a living

position promotion, preferment, improvement
executive place where smth. or smb. is or stands,

especially in relation to others

Exercise 2. Identify all business terms used in the text and give their Russian equivalents.

Exercise 3. Find a Latin expression in the text and give its Russian equivalent.

Exercise 4. What does the verb ‘will’ mean in sentences (2), (3), (4)? Translate these sentences into Russian.

Exercise 5. Read and translate the text.

Text 6 – A Specimen of a Job Advertisement

Please be informed that many job advertisements may contain a number of abbreviations. They are usually well understood in the profession. The abbreviations are intended to save money on the advertisement. In his book R. Haigh gives a specimen of a typical job advertisement for a general commercial lawyer which reads as follows:

Wanted 3 yrs + PGE gen comm practitioner. Caseload to include Co.-Co. com Prop & IRP. Large city centre practice. Must have own transport. Salary neg FT position, assistant with partner potential. Apply with CV to Mr. J.M. Stokes by 13/04/04. = Wanted a general commercial practitioner with more than three years of post-qualified experience. The caseload will include company commercial, commercial property, and intellectual property rights. Large city centre practice. Salary negotiable. A full-time position for an assistant lawyer with potential to become a partner. Apply with your Curriculum Vitae to Mr. J.M. Stokes by 13 April 2004.

(Source: Haigh R. Legal English)

Section Two – Corporate and Financial Statements

Theoretical Background

Any legal entity, irrespective of its concrete business organization, has to prepare a lot of corporate and financial statements, including annual reports, interim reports, cash statements, cash flow statements, income statements, statements of compliance, statements of financial position and the like.

Corporate annual reports have long been considered the pulse of corporate realities. As a specific text type corporate annual reports have been discussed at length in many publications. Recent studies have for the most part analyzed generic features [Кривоносов 2001; Дрожащих 2008], structural features [Bhatia 1995, 2010], lexical peculiarities [Rutherford 2005; Malavasi 2007], discursive strategies [Почепцов 2004; Mignini 2007] and specific fragments [Garzone 2004] of corporate annual reports. Comparative studies of corporate annual reports have also been carried out to reveal writing strategies and to explain the occurrence of a substantial linguistic variation from a cross-cultural perspective [Дрожащих 2009; De Groot 2009].

The annual report is an yearly record of a company’s financial condition. It contains a description of the company’s operations as well as its balance sheet and income statement certified by independent auditors to be accurate and true representations of the business performance of the company. The main objective of corporate annual reports is to inform the reader about the performance and health of the company and prospects for its future development. As a rule, annual reports are distributed in a printed form. Electronic versions of corporate annual reports are available on the Web for interested readers to download. The primary reader group of annual reports comprises majority shareholders, whereas the second target group includes readers such as investors, financial analysts, bankers, financial journalists, customers, corporate officers and employees.

Corporate annual reports have a very peculiar structural organization. The annual report falls into many sections technically known as sub-genres, such as a CEO’s Letter to Shareholders, Performance Highlights, Directors’ Biographies, etc. Each sub-genre is a self-contained entity involving unique narrators, purposes and readers but each fragment in one way or another contributes to the constitution of the full report. For example, a typical annual report compiled by a banking institution includes the following sections:

1. CEO’s Letter to Shareholders;

2. Business Overview and Market Position;

3. Strategy for Leadership and Growth;

4. Business Organization;

5. Results by Business Area;

6. Information Systems;

7. Human Resources;

8. Office Facilities;

9. Ratings;

10. Charities and Donations;

11. Financial Statements;

12. Auditor’s Report.

Each section of an annual report has a respective title. Titles are highly informative and are usually characterized by a nominal style. Subtitles are generally longer than titles and develop the content of the title so that the reader can better understand what a textual sub-section is about.

Annual reports are commonly written in a positive, business-like manner. The language of annual reports is distinguished by such style markers as neutrality, high information density, objectivity and formality of expression. The vocabulary contains a considerable number of terms and terminological collocations from different areas of Business English. They are as follows:

general economic terms (e.g. economy, inflation, market);
accounting and bookkeeping terms (e.g. a balance sheet, assets, liabilities);
terms relevant for a specific business sector. For instance, in annual reports produced by banking institutions a variety of banking terms can be found (e.g. business loans, consumer loans, corporate bonds, time deposits, savings accounts, m-payments, etc.).

It should be noted that many terminological collocations used in corporate annual reports are based on kernel terms borrowed from specific Natural Sciences:

- Geography (e.g. investment climate – инвестиционный климат);

- Chemistry (e.g. transparency of operations – прозрачность операций, market elasticity – эластичность рынка);

- Mathematics (e.g. capital adequacy ratio – коэффициент достаточности капитала);

- Physics (e.g. market fluctuations – рыночные колебания, financial flows – финансовые потоки).

A significant part of the vocabulary is neuter, while colloquialisms and jargon items are never used. As to the parts of speech, the striking feature of annual reports is the predominance of nominal parts of speech. Cardinal numerals play a very significant role in annual report texts and occur in all sections of the texts under consideration, especially in accounting sections.

As a rule, an individual engaged in compiling annual reports relies on specific terms to explain his points and seeks to illustrate them with concrete examples or financial/statistical highlights. Separate paragraphs are usually short, stick to one topic and include no more than eight to ten lines. To clarify his or her message, the writer of a corporate annual report often uses visual aids, such as tables, graphs, and charts because financial results are better introduced in charts and tables. It is important that the writers of an annual report have the rhetorical skills to compose a document that is clear and understandable because the annual report must be credible. A special study devoted to the relationship between writing quality and corporate credibility showed that the plain language in annual reports is perceived as a sign of corporate financial health [for more details, see De Groot 2008].

V.K. Bhatia claims that corporate annual reports are a combination of at least four different discourses included in the same document [Bhatia 2010]. They are as follows:

1). Accounting discourse which forms a major part of annual report texts certified by public accountants. The discourse in question is characterized by a great number of technical accounting terms and is intended exclusively for financial professionals, such as majority owners, external investors, financial analysts, auditors, tax and regulatory authorities. Elements of accounting discourse can be found in many sections of the annual report, including corporate financial statements, auditor’s report and notes to the financial statements submitted by a corporate entity. The basic financial statements to be filed by any company with regulatory authorities are a balance sheet, an income statement and a statement of cash flows. The purpose of financial statements is to communicate to users the effect of operating activities during a specified time period and the financial position at the end of the period for a specific business. Financial statements are marked by a rigid compositional structure. For example, the first structural element of the balance sheet is the heading that indicates the title of a particular company as well as the title and date of the statement:

BALANCE SHEET

as of January 1, 2005

Title of a Credit Institution: Joint Stock West Siberian Bank

Address: 17a, ul. Podshibyakina, Salekhard, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, Tyumen Region, 629008

The heading is followed by accounting information, to be divided into 3 sections: assets, liabilities, and owner’s equity. From a linguistic point of view, all items that make up assets, liabilities and owner’s equity are special accounting terms;

2). Discourse of economics and finance can be found in such sections of the report as Business Overview and Market Position and Results by Business Area. This part of annual report texts is devoted to the discussion and analysis of facts and statistical information presented in the accounting sections of the annual report. For example: The results of UBS Private and Corporate Clients were very satisfying in 1999. Total operating income increased 5 % or CHF 288 million, to CHF 6,143 million in 1999. This improvement was primarily due to the higher margins on interest-related business, as well as the first full-year impact of the amalgamation and repricing of products from the two former banks. Furthermore, the improved quality of the loan portfolio resulted in lower credit loss expenses [Annual Report of Union Bank of Switzerland 1999];

3). Elements of legal discourse can be generally found in those parts of the annual report which contain forward-looking typical legal statements related to future business or financial performance of the company. For example: Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted or projected, if any, and reported results should not be considered or taken as an indication of future performance. Although the projections and forward-looking statements are considered to be accurate at the time they are made available, they are provided for your information only without warranty of any kind whatsoever [this example is borrowed from Bhatia 2010].

4). Annual reports also serve as the company’s principal public relations document and consequently contain elements of public relations discourse. Indeed, management uses annual reports as a platform for promoting corporate philosophies, strategies, and successes. As a public relations tool, annual reports became advertisements for the company. The chief value of today’s annual reports may be to promote the company image by conveying its personality and expressing confidence in its future prospects rather than to describe the company’s financial condition.

Annual reports employ objective figures and evaluations to reassure the reader of the health and trustworthiness of the company. For example: Last year, a total of 51,000 micro-credits in the amount of $ 19 million were extended; In 1999, the Bank’s capital grew by 30,6% to EUR 3 479,9 million due to the successful placement of our additional share capital and profit generated in 1999 [Annual Report of Union Bank of Switzerland 1999]. In addition, the writer of an annual report makes use of various lexical items to promote the company image and leave a positive impression on the general reader. The above-mentioned lexical items fall into three basic groups:

a). lexical items which describe importance and competitiveness of a relevant company (such as its size, international or global importance, attention towards its clients, innovative nature and high quality of products or services that the company offers) (e.g. first-rate, world-class, prestigious, leading; excellence, importance, robustness; compete, maintain, position/establish itself.

b). lexical items stressing a useful and profitable action performed by the company or an achievement which implies positive and admirable results (e.g. profitable, successful, efficient, top-performing; improvement, efficiency, prosperity, progress; achieve, provide, attain.

c). lexical items which underline positive values of the company under consideration (e.g. open-minded, secure, safe, reliable, transparent; compliance, responsibility, prudence; commit, support, ensure) [for more details see Malavasi 2007].

To make a positive impression on the reader the writer of the annual report also makes intensive use of superlative and comparative adjectives (the strongest international balance sheet, the most profitable private banking institution, the highest international standards of speed, accuracy and discretion, the very highest standards of confidentiality and trust, etc) and elements of advertising rheroric found in texts that accompany photographs (e.g. Eva and Lars summer of 1999. 4000 km, nine countries, nine currencies. One credit card. ) [for more details, see Дрожащих 2008].

It is worth mentioning that the informative and promotional goals which are relevant for the annual report differ per component. For instance, some sections of the text under consideration, such as Financial Statements and Notes to the Financial Statements have a purely informative nature, while a so-called CEO’s Letter to Shareholders contain lots of promotional elements. This section is aimed at both professional and non-professional target audiences (minority owners, journalists, the general public, etc.). For example: With our new business structure in place, we now have the ability to respond quickly to changing client demands, allowing us to increase our momentum significantly. Our mix of businesses is ideal for exploiting the changing financial services landscape. We assure you of our commitment to the growth, our fellow shareholders, and we thank you, along with our staff and our clients, for your support during the past year [Annual Report of Union Bank of Switzerland 1999].

The example shows that the tone of the above CEO’s Letter to Shareholders is positive and personal, with frequent use of first and second person pronouns. Important target audiences are explicitly mentioned. The organization is portrayed as a stable and a financially sound entity which is looking ahead with optimism. V.K. Bhatia notes that the real motivation for placing elements of different discourses within a single annual report text is that “such textual proximity is likely to lend marketing and public relations discourse the same factual reliability and hence credibility that is often presupposed from the use of numerical data” [Bhatia 2010 : 43].

At present, annual reports play an important impression management function and take on a magazine look with glossy paper, color photographs, and layouts. In this context, E.B. De Groot concludes that company reports have evolved from highly numerical texts into multimodal texts with many qualitative performance disclosures needed to reflect shareholders’ changing reading needs as well as changes in reporting practices and requirements [De Groot 2008]. The contemporary annual reports are characterized by a hybrid or a multimodal nature, because the textual mode is often contemplated by the visual mode [for more details see Анисимова 2003; Чернявская 2008; Jameson 2000]. It is interesting to note that the textual mode and the visual mode closely interact with each other and the structure of annual report texts is realized through typographical marks or headings, textual information is included in graphs and tables, while the narrators are manifested by means of management portraits [for more details see Jameson 2000]. Visual devices give a corporate image to both customers and shareholders and are actively involved in attaining this promotional objective.

Contents

Foreword