Translating Financial Statements as a Means to Attract Foreign Investors A Corpus Study of Textual Fit of Polish Consolidated Financial Statements
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Published:
May 31, 2024
Keywords:
consolidated financial statements, financial translation, corpus, textual fit
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Abstract
Commercial companies generally seek to maximise their market value. One of the means to achieve it is to attract foreign investors. Consequently, companies present information for investors not only in the language of the country of their registration, but also in other languages. They translate the information predominantly into English due to its status as a lingua franca. The aim of this study is to investigate the English translations of the consolidated financial statements of Polish listed companies and assess their textual fit to the consolidated financial statements prepared by the UK and US companies. The analysis covers the legal context of the preparation of consolidated financial statements and a corpus analysis of the language used in these documents. The results show that although there is a variation between particular translations, they are fit for the purpose of attracting foreign investors.
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Wasilewska, K. (2024). Translating Financial Statements as a Means to Attract Foreign Investors: A Corpus Study of Textual Fit of Polish Consolidated Financial Statements. MonTI. Monographs in Translation and Interpreting, (16). https://doi.org/10.6035/MonTI.2024.16.12
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Chesterman, Andrew. 2004. „Hypotheses about translation uni-versals.” in, Claims, Changes and Challenges in Transla-tion Studies (John Benjamins).
Culpeper, Jonathan. 2009. „Keyness: Words, parts-of-speech and semantic categories in the character-talk of Shake-speare’s Romeo and Juliet”, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 14: 29-59.
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Kilgarriff, Adam, Vít Baisa, Jan Bušta, Miloš Jakubíček, Vojtěch Kovář, Jan Michelfeit, Pavel Rychlý, and Vít Suchomel. 2014. „The Sketch Engine: ten years on”, Lexicography, 1: 7-36.
Łazarowicz, Edyta. 2019. “The comparability of IFRS statements of cash flows in Poland. The influence of national regu-lations.” Zeszyty Teoretyczne Rachunkowości 101 (157): 149−166.
Leibbrand, Miriam Paola. 2018. “The French Terminology of Consolidated Statements of Profit or Loss: A Status Quo.” In Éric Poirier and Daniel Gallego-Hernández (Eds) Business and Institutional Translation: New In-sights and Reflections. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 81 – 96.
Liebbrand, Miriam Paola. 2019. “From chiffre d’affaires to turno-ver and from revenue to produits: An LSP approach to financial translation.” In Ingrid Simonnæs, Øivin An-dersen, Klaus Schubert (Eds.), New Challenges for Re-search on Language for Special Purposes: Selected Pro-ceedings from the 21st LSP-Conference 28–30 June 2017 Bergen, Norway. Forum für Fachsprachen-Forschung; Vol. 154. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 269-288.
Nobes, Christopher, and Christian Stadler. 2018. „Impaired trans-lations: IFRS from English and annual reports into Eng-lish”, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 31: 1981-2005.
Regulation (EC) No 1606/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 July 2002 on the application of inter-national accounting standards
SEC. 2011. An Analysis of IFRS in Practice. Securities and Ex-change Commission Staff Paper, November 16, 2011. https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/globalaccountingstandards/ifrs-work-plan-paper-111611-practice.pdf (30.05.2023)
Swales, John M. (1990) Genre Analysis. English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zeff, Stephen A. 2007. „Some obstacles to global financial report-ing comparability and convergence at a high level of quality”, The British Accounting Review, 39: 290-302.