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The Translation Study of Chinese and American Pharmaceutical Profiles from the 
Perspective of Recontextualization – Regarding GPHL and Merck 

Xuan SHEN1, Xiaohai WANG2

1School of English for International Business, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Baiyun Avenue North, Guangzhou, 
China, E-mail: 20200310030@gdufs.edu.cn

2Corresponding author: same as above, E-mail: 228208418@qq.com

Abstract
Pharmaceutical companies play an important role in defending us against the pandemic. As Chinese pharmaceutical 
companies enter overseas markets, making contributions to the world, their company profiles need to be adapted to different 
contexts, such as the American context. Under this circumstance, company profiles with different contexts can provide insight
into the discursive relationship between text and context in the study of website translation. In view of this, this study firstly 
contrasts the English profile of Chinese company Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Holdings Limited (GPHL) with that of 
American company Merck by genre analysis, then studies the application of (Wodak & Fairclough, 2010)’s 
“recontextualization” concept to the translation of the company profile—finally, generalizing the translation strategies and 
recontextualizing mechanism that is suitable for Chinese pharmaceutical companies. It is hoped that this study can deepen the 
application of recontextualization and thereby give some advice to those Chinese pharmaceutical companies in translating 
pharmaceutical company profiles.
Keywords: recontextualization, company profile, pharmaceutical companies, translation, genre analysis
1. Introduction
To improve the competitiveness of Chinese pharmaceutical companies in the foreign market, especially during the pandemic, 
the external communication of corporate culture is particularly critical, and language is an important carrier for intercultural 
communication. Under this circumstance, many Chinese enterprises, including long-established enterprises, have set up 
English versions for their corporate profiles. As part of the corporate website, they are the window for corporate outreach, 
which involves more than retranslation (Wu& Li, 2017). Elements are the linguistic features or resources that company 
profiles have. Wodak & Fairclough (2010) suggested that elements include explanations, evaluations, and legitimations that 
can be added to the new context. When elements are translated from one language to another, it’s necessary to free them from 
the original context and accept the new context. The disintegration and recombination of the context are known as 
recontextualization. Recontextualization has been used for website translation studies over the past few years (Lin, 2021; 
Zhang & Zhao, 2020; Wu & Li, 2017), but not many have focused on pharmaceutical companies' profile translation. 
Moreover, those articles tend to pay more attention to the content than structure.
Therefore, this paper aims to apply the recontextualization to the translation study of the Chinese pharmaceutical company 
profile compared with the American pharmaceutical company profile and combine the genre analysis to find the differences 
between Chinese pharmaceutical company (GPHL) and American pharmaceutical company (Merck) in constructing corporate 
profiles and then point out the translating issues about the profile of GPHL. From recontextualization, translation strategies
and mechanisms can be explored for the Chinese pharmaceutical companies to improve the translating quality of company 
profiles. Theoretically, this paper partially fills the gap in profile translation study by combining genre analysis and 
recontextualization. Practically, it is expected that this study can give some suggestions for the translation of pharmaceutical 
company profiles from Chinese to English.
2. Literature Review
Context is vital for intercultural communication studies. Recontextualization requires communicators to extract elements and 
information from the source context and reconstruct them in the new context for communicative purposes (Fairclough, 2010). 
For translation studies, recontextualization is defined as selecting important information from the source language and 
reorganizing and rewriting them in the context of the targeted language.
2.1 Recontextualization 

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Recontextualization is a notion first put forward by Bernstein in his research on pedagogy. It regulates the transformation of 
discourse within discourse production into the field of its reproduction. It’s a process in which texts, signs, or meanings are 
selected from one social practice and introduced into another (Wu et al., 2016). Linell (1998) believed that recontextualization 
is a dynamic process, and it means the transfer-transformation of elements from one context to another. He classified it into 
three parts-intratextual, intertextual, and interdiscursive recontextualization. Recontextualization is not just confined to 
pedagogy. Fairclough (2003) expanded this concept into discourse and social practices. He believed that recontextualization 
is the representation of social events and the perspectivation of discourse. A particular type of social event can be represented 
through different genres and networks of social practices. Meanwhile, communicators’ cognition and notions can impact and 
transform discourse. The relationship between language and social practice is mediated through recontextualization 
(Altahmazi, 2020). Besides, recontextualization functions as assigning values to tokens in a particular context adapted to the 
constraints and requirements of a different context, thus re-evaluating and assigning a different value (Fetzer, 2017).
Recontextualization is widely and deeply discussed in many fields, such as social reform and media. Wodak & Fairclough 
(2010) studied the higher education policies of the European Union and found that the same policy could have different 
understandings in the various political, cultural, and historical contexts. They brought recontextualization into discourse
analysis and explained the disciplinary relationship between this notion and social reform. Wu (2016) applied 
recontextualization and transformation to the media discourse based on the First-Instance Judgment of the Peng Yu Case. 
This article explains why a text is interpreted differently in different contexts-media context, judgment context, and reader 
interpretation context by creating the theoretical framework of the discourse-historical-contextual approach. Media discourse 
is also analyzed in other methods. Anbin (2021) delineated constructive journalism's conceptual common ground from 
comparative journalism and intercultural communication. By comparing public opinion surveillance (POS) between western 
and Chinese journalism, he discovered that POS had been recontextualized as both Western and Chinese journalism has the 
same goal of serving the people. Still, they hold various news concepts and media eco-system. Still, his research lays the 
theoretical foundation for recontextualizing constructive journalism in the Chinese social and cultural context.
2.2 Recontextualization and translation
Recontextualization is also developed in the study of translation. Moreover, many researchers utilize recontextualization in 
the translation study of corporate publicity. Wodak 1999) argued that recontextualizing a text or discourse would bring the 
transformation of meanings through which the new context reflects elements being endowed with different dynamic 
contextual meanings. Based on the previous categorization and transformation views (Fairclough, 2003; Wodak, 1999), Wu 
(2016) proposed the following categorization of transformations in the recontextualization process: addition, deletion, 
abstraction, and rearrangement to analyze the media discourse, which paves the way for his analysis of website translation. 
Wu & Li (2017) further took website translations of Fortune Global 500 companies as examples to reveal the application of 
recontextualization and transformation in terms of the categorization of transformations: addition, deletion, rearrangement, 
and replacement, which enlightens more researchers to use this categorization and has the referential value for the study of 
website translation strategies. They also believed that the study of website translation should be from the perspective of 
publicity translation. Other than comparing Chinese company websites with American companies’, Zhang & Zhao (2020)
utilized the Chinese and English company profiles of the world’s top 500 Chinese companies and explored the application of 
recontextualization, which is beneficial to the external publicity translation of Chinese companies. Wu & Dong (2020)
concentrated on the transmission of Chinese culture. They elicited the website translation of Confucius Institute and concluded 
the new principles of recontextualization for this type of website translation: dynamic state, detailed demonstration, immediate 
feedback, and complete message. Altahmazi (2020) showed the multimodal and cross-lingual recontextualization in the online 
news site. He found that recontextualization existed in a different ideological narrative. Wang (2021) shed light on the website 
translation of China General Nuclear Power Corporation and the translation issues of the typical Chinese state company. She 
also pointed out the importance of recontextualization in corporate culture transmission and in entering foreign markets. 
According to the literature review, it can be concluded that many scholars are beginning to putting recontextualization into 
the study of website translation, especially company profile translation. Still, a few of them notice the website translation of 
pharmaceutical companies, though they make significant contributions to preventing the pandemic, and their publicity 
translations closely connect with overseas business. On top of that, previous literature did not set clear boundaries between
structure and content dimension under recontextualization. Therefore, it’s expected that studying the translation of 
pharmaceutical companies can help Chinese pharmaceutical companies enter the foreign markets and benefit people with 
made-in-China medicines.
3. Method



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This paper selects two typical English company profiles from a Chinese pharmaceutical company-GPHL and an American 
company Merck for a case analysis to partially fill the gap. It integrates two approaches: genre analysis and recontextualization 
for the structural and content dimensions. Genre analysis contrasts the linguistic moves between GPHL and Merck in the 
structural dimension. Through this approach, structural differences can be found. Based on the linguistic moves, content 
differences can be further examined by categorizing transformations in the recontextualization (Wu et al., 2016; Wu & Li, 
2017). Recontextualization takes place within the same field, the pharmaceutical industry, and within the same genre, 
company profiles. It’s aimed to improve the profile translation of GPHL by those two approaches.
3.1 Genre analysis
Traditionally, the genre is classified into literature and rhetoric. However, following a deeper understanding of discourse 
analysis, linguists broaden the concept of genre, and they suggest that genre involves all the linguistic events of social practices 
and communication activities. In general, there are two schools of genre analysis. Australian school is stand by Martin. The 
Swalesian school, represented by Swale and Bhatia, takes linguistic moves and steps analysis as the starting point for the 
discourse analysis. Linguistic moves are defined as “a discoursal or rhetorical unit that performs a coherent communicative 
function in a written or spoken discourse (Swales, 2004). A move can be realized by one clause, one or more sentences, a 
paragraph, or longer (Cotos et al., 2017). Move analysis is mainly used to study academic articles. Tseng (2018) studied 
research articles in nine linguistic journals and found three moves: providing a theoretical background, establishing a 
theoretical framework, and sharpening the significance of one’s study. Bhatia (1993) displayed seven moves of promotional 
letters in the business field, including establishing credentials, introducing the offer, offering incentives, enclosing documents, 
soliciting a response, using pressure tactics, and ending politely. He also believed that communicative purposes need to be 
figured out before analyzing the linguistic moves. In our paper, the move is seen as a stretch of linguistic resources that serve 
the particular communicative purposes of publicity. Translation strategies can be realized through move analysis.
Many investigators have been concerned about business documents employing genre analysis in recent years. For example, 
Liu (2012) conducted the quantitative and qualitative approaches to study Chinese and American pharmaceutical companies' 
profiles. She found that realization is quite different, although they have similar linguistic moves. Deng (2013) started with 
the angle of intercultural communication under genre analysis. It is found that Chinese and English company profiles own 
different linguistic moves, and they have their unique linguistic features. Li & Zhu (2020) researched CEO statements in 
English from Chinese and western annual reports. Through the corpus linguistic approach and move-step analysis, they 
discovered that although both of them have the same communicative purposes, the realizations of linguistic moves are quite 
different. The linguistic moves of western annual reports are more flexible than those of Chinese annual reports. From the 
literature review, it can be found that genre analysis has been widely used in business documents and contrastive analysis. 
However, not many combine genre analysis and recontextualization with studying the business documents, not to mention 
the website translation. Moreover, this paper attempts to explain why translate in this way concerning the translation of 
corporate publicity materials.
3.2 Move analysis
GPHL is a traditional Chinese pharmaceutical company that works on Chinese patent medicine, herbal medicine, chemical-
pharmaceutical raw material, healthcare products, etc. This company plays a part in the transmission of traditional Chinese 
medicine culture, and it owns the overseas business. Merck is an American pharmaceutical company and ranks one of the 
Global 500. Its business mainly covers western medicine for treating COVID-19, cardio-metabolic disorders, animal health, 
etc. On the one hand, they have similar points, such as the rank on the Global 500 and the same industry. On the other hand, 
differences cannot be ignored either. They have various cultural and social backgrounds, lines of business, and enterprise 
property. If GPHL wants to accommodate the western market. In that case, it requires modifying its profile translation 
referring to that of Merck so that western customers can better understand Chinese medicine and Chinese pharmaceutical 
companies.
As mentioned previously, communicative purposes need to be given priority and can be concluded as follows: attract the 
potential customers; show the features and advantages; establish the initial relationship with stakeholders. For the 
pharmaceutical companies, due to their strong specialty, high-quality company profiles enable stakeholders to understand the 
lines of business as well. Linguistic moves can be summarized based on the analysis of communicative purposes. Besides, 
move structure is a configuration of stretches of all the constituent moves of a text that accomplish coherent communicative 
goals and development ideas (Tseng, 2018). It can be seen that Figure 1 is the structural description of moves of GPHL, and 
Figure 2 is the move structure of Merck.
Table 1. Move structure of GPHL



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Move Structural description Percentage of the total number
M1
S1
S2
S3
S4

General introduction
Nature
Product and service
Capability
Achievement

14.15%

M2 The work of party building 19.51%
M3 Social responsibility 15.83%
M4
S1
S2
S3
S4

Achievement and Capability
Subsidiaries 
Intangible cultural heritages
Trademarks
Patents

44.83%

M5 Development target 5.68%

Table 2. Move structure of Merck
Move Structural description Percentage of the total number
M1
S1
S2

General introduction
History
Product and service

13.31%

M2 Achievement 1.99%
M3 Mission statement 3.11%
M4 Leadership 3.61%
M5
S1
S2
S3

Capability
Employees
Research and development
Social responsibility

2.61%

M6 Corporate culture and value 36.69%
M7 History 4.48%
M8 Product and service 27.74%
M9 Partner 3.73%
M10 Policies 2.73%

From Figures 1 and 2 it can be seen that the move structure of GPHL and Merck is different as a whole. It can be further 
discussed based on similarities and differences in move structure. The same move structure is a general introduction, 
accounting for 14.15% and 13.31%, respectively. Concerning the differences, the work of party building takes up a more 
significant proportion of the move structure of GPHL, while Merck’s company profile does not. Corporate culture and value 
are the move structure that GPHL’s company profile does not possess. Apart from that, the move structure of achievement 
and capability occupies the most significant proportion of 44.83% for GPHL. At the same time, Merck talks about corporate 
culture and value altogether with product and service, which accounts for 36.69% and 27.74%.
3.3 Translation strategies
According to transformations of recontextualization, there are four translation strategies: addition, deletion, rearrangement, 
and abstraction (Wu et al., 2016). However, Wu & Dong (2020) brought another concept of substitution for their study of 
website translation. As required, there are five translation strategies suitable for the case analysis: addition, substitution, 
rearrangement, abstraction, and deletion. The move analysis impacts the process of addition, deletion, and rearrangement. 
Profile translation of GPHL can be improved according to the company profile of Merck through this process. The five 
translation strategies are explained as follows:

3.3.1 Addition
Fairclough (2003) suggested that elements such as explanations, evaluations, and legitimations may be added according to 
the new context. When it comes to the profile translation, additions complement some illustrations of characteristics and 
historical or cultural background. It also implies adding some statistics or figures. Adding the move structure and explaining
medical terms are significant for the two specific cases. As linguistic moves have been compared, it can be found that 



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information about corporate culture and value can be added. Leadership can also be complemented if necessary.
Aside from that, GPHL mentions its goal of development as follows:

GPHL develop its core business Grand Southern TCM, Grand Health, Grand Commerce, and Grand Medical 
Treatment.
Source link: www.gpc.com.cn/

Its profile translation contains medical strategies characterized by vogue meaning. Western customers would like to receive 
more objective and specific information. Therefore, they would like to know more about the particular content of Grand 
Southern TCM, Grand Health, Grand Commerce, and Grand Medical Treatment.
The added information should cater to the benefits of western customers as well. For example, Merck writes its strategies and 
policies with functions:

We support public policies that advance the interests of patients, improve public health and promote access to medicines 
and innovation. (Source link: www.msd.at/en/msd-worldwide)

The principle of “Customer first” needs profiles to be attractive. They should know what customers want to know, such as 
the functions of products and services. On the contrary, when it comes to the introduction of products and services, GPHL 
states as follows:

It also boasts six state-level intangible cultural heritages: Xingqun Xiasangju Granules, BYS Dashen Kouyangqing 
Granules, Wanglaoji herbal Tea, and Chenliji traditional Chinese medical culture, Pangaoshou traditional medical 
culture, and the preparation process of Zhongyi Baoying Compound. (Source link: www.gpc.com.cn/)

The names of Chinese-type medicine are endowed with Chinese characteristics. From this paragraph, transliteration is adopted 
to translate medical terms. This translation strategy is not concerned with cultural differences and readability. It’s suggested 
that add the efficiency and ingredients of medicines so that western customers can learn more about Chinese medicine and 
Chinese medicine culture. For instance, when talking about moving the structure of products and services, Merck introduces 
them as listed:

Cardio-metabolic disorders
We are determined to find solutions for the most serious chronic health challenges, such as cardiovascular disease and 
diabetes. (Source link: www.msd.at/en/msd-worldwide)

Cardio-metabolic disorders are also the medical term and can make reading difficult. But it explains the most serious chronic 
health challenges” with the sentence. Customers can guess that this term is related to chronic diseases. That’s why GPHL can
correlate its medical terms with its efficiency.

3.3.2 Substitution 
Wu & Dong (2020) regarded replacement as replacing the representation of a social event with another social event. The 
premise is that both of them hold similar features. For the profile translation, substitution was more likely to be realized by 
referential strategy, in which the name of the company should be replaced by the personal pronoun “we.” GPHL prefers to 
use its company name to show its authority, which widens the distance between the company and western customers, while 
Merck would instead use “we” to narrow down the space. The following two examples belong to the same move of general 
introduction.

GPHL is a well-established enterprise with over 400 years of history. (Source link: www.gpc.com.cn)
And Merck states as follows:
For 130 years, we’ve focused on the next quarter and the next century. (Source link: www.msd.at/en/msd-worldwide)

3.3.3 Deletion 
Wodak (2001) argues that when writers represent a social event, they have to choose what to reserve and what to delete. Back 
to the profile translation of GPHL, it can be seen that there are many phrases with Chinese characteristics, especially the move 
structure of the work of party building. This move does not exist in the source of Merck. Moreover, GPHL repeatedly tells its 
patriot spirits as its company spirits. Still, western customers cannot connect patriot spirits with a pharmaceutical company
because we do not share the same historical and political background. For instance, when it comes to the linguistic moves of 
historical knowledge, it talks below:

It has produced a galaxy of revolutionaries, such as Yang Yi, a leader of CPC in early days, advocate and organizer of 



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Guangzhou Uprising and member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee
(Source link: www.gpc.com.cn)

When it talks about the move structure of party building, it states some proper nouns related to Chinese histories, such as 
“Guangzhou Uprising” “CPC Central Committee” “Yang Yi”, which is difficult for westerners to understand and is not 
suitable for the communicative purpose. Hence, it’s better to delete the information or represent information in the form of a
video so that readers can choose whether to read it or not.
Another piece of information that needed to be deleted in the move structure of the party building is praise and achievement 
with Chinese characteristics. GPHL demonstrates that:

The CPC Committee of Guangzhou Wanglaoji Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. has been listed as the “Excellent Grass-root 
Party Branch of Guangzhou”. (Source link: www.gpc.com.cn)

Because westerners do not recognize those achievements and value the facts, such as statistics and figures, it would be better
not to show this type of achievement. All in all, the move structure of party building should be deleted following the cultural 
differences.
3.3.4 Rearrangement
Rearrangement refers to the change of orders when representing a social event (Fairclough, 2003). According to the analysis 
of the move, it can be concluded that GPHL writes its achievement in different steps and occupies a more significant 
proportion than that of Merck. Therefore, it’s helpful to list figures, statistics, and other factual information together, just as 
Merck does in its move structure of achievement to make the company profile concise and conspicuous. Below is the 
achievement on Merck’s website.

Our company by the numbers
74k employees
$13.6 B Research and development investment in 2020
$3.1 B Total philanthropy in 2019
(Source link: www.msd.at/en/msd-worldwide)

Figures and statistics can deepen the company’s impression, which favors cooperation and investment. On the contrary, GPHL 
proposes its information about figures and statistics in the move structure of achievement below:
It possesses ten well-known Chinese trademarks, namely GPHL, Baiyunshan, Wanglaoji, Chenliji, Zhongyi, Kangzhiba, 
Pangaoshou, Tianxin, Hejigong, and Qixing. The brand value of Wanglaoji reaches 108 billion RMB, the No.1 beverage 
brand in China. In comparison, the brand value of Baiyunshan is estimated to be 28.3 billion RMB, ranking the first among 
medical brands in China.
“Ten,” “108 billion RMB,” and “28.3 billion RMB” are the statistics that need to be shown in the apparent position to present 
the company’s capability and convince benefit communities.
Rearrangement can also be used in the move structure of social responsibility of GPHL. Here are two examples:

In Meizhou, GPHL also constructed Wanglaoji’s first ingredient extraction center and the Caizhilin Chinese medicine 
industrialization service center, creating at least 800 jobs for local people and helping boost the local economy.
The Wanglaoji Charity Fund of RMB 182.8 million set up by Wanglaoji Health has taken an industry-leading stance, 
donating money and supplies to bring relief to disaster-stricken areas such as Ya’an, Lydian, Wenchuan, Yushu, and 
Yiliang, and preventing and controlling H7N9, bird flu, and another disease. Total donations have exceeded 1 billion 
RMB.
(Source link: www.gpc.com.cn)

800 jobs”, “182.8 million”, and “1 billion” are factual information that needs to be rearranged following the form of Merck. 
Besides, Merck has the move structure of product and service, which customers are concerned about, while GPHL does not 
have this structure and talks about it in the move structure of achievement. It is suggested that the part of the product and
service should be rearranged and listed as one move other than one step.
3.3.5 Abstraction
Fairclough (2003) indicated that abstraction is the degree of generalization. Wu (2016) thought writers could report a social 
event specifically or straightforwardly. This notion is suitable for the profile translation as well. Merck begins with a 



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conclusion before introducing structural descriptions in detail, while GPHL does not abstract its descriptions. The moving 
structure of products and services is an excellent example of Merck:

We focus on scientific innovation to deliver medicines and vaccines that may help millions of people around the world.
(Source link: www.msd.at/en/msd-worldwide)

This conclusion implies two meanings. Firstly, the scope of business is “medicines and vaccines.” Then, the benefits brought 
to customers are “help millions of people around the world.” Here is another example of Merck:

Oncology 
Our mission is to deliver innovations that extend and improve the lives of people with cancer
Vaccines
Vaccines are one of the greatest public health success stones-and we’ve been discovering, developing, and delivering 
vaccines to help prevent disease for over 100 years
(Source link: www.msd.at/en/msd-worldwide)

Inversely, GPHL introduces its product and service without a conclusion:
GPHL is dedicated to researching and developing Chinese patent medicine, Chinese herbal medicine, chemical-
pharmaceutical raw materials and preparations, biological medicine and healthcare products, and pharmaceutical 
logistics and distribution and healthcare service.
(Source link: www.gpc.com.cn)

GPHL uses the parallel to show its products and service but lacks a conclusion. “Chinese patent medicine” and “Chinese 
herbal medicine” are all Chinese medicine, so that they can be categorized into Chinese medicine. The scope of business can 
be summarized as working on the research and development of Chinese medicine, and those medicines can benefit customers.
Recontextualization has been discussed based on structure and content dimension. Therefore, the recontextualizing principle 
of company profile translation can be further analyzed at the macro and cognitive levels.
4.1 Recontextualizing principle of company profile translation
As Wu & Dong (2020) put forward the recontextualizing framework of website translation for company cultural transmission, 
the direction of company profile translation can be concluded based on this and the case study of GPHL and Merck. Our 
framework explores how to revise the pharmaceutical company profile translation and then figure out the recontextualization 
process and mechanism to realize companies' publicity from the macro, micro, and cognitive dimensions. This mechanism is 
conducive to understanding the application of recontextualization in the translation study of company profiles. It may be 
applicable in other types of website translation. The pattern is shown in Figure 1.



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Figure 1: Recontextualization process of company profile translation
In the macro dimension, corporate and language culture have a combined effect on cultural context and the process of de-
contextualization due to cultural differences. At the micro-level, genre analysis and recontextualization can be carried out to 
recontextualize the text concerning the effects of language and culture. Finally, recontextualizing translation should coincide 
with the cognition and arouse readers’ attention; external publicity can be realized through the whole process.
4.2 Translation of corporate publicity 
The translated text of GPHL is not applicable to two principles of the Three Principles of “Closeness”(Huang, 2004): closeness 
to westerners’ needs for information about China and proximity to their thinking and language habits. Translation of corporate 
publicity is regarded as publicity for foreign customers. It functions by letting them know about the company efficiently and
directly, promoting commodities and company image, making them accept and buy products, services, and notions, and 
receiving interests.
However, by comparing the English profile between GPHL and Merck, it can be seen that the structure and content of GPHL 
do not meet the expectations of foreign customers, and their cultural differences and information needs are underestimated. 
That means the cognitive level has not finished, so the external publicity cannot be realized. Furthermore, the whole text lacks 
focus, so the publicity goals are not achieved.
4.3 High and low context
Culture works as the mental strategy for human beings and functions as forming their way of thinking, feeling, and acting 
(Hofstede, 2001). There are several cultural factors influencing how people see the world. Different patterns of English 
translations between GPHL and Merck reflect the differences in context. Hall (1976) came up with high and low context, 
mainly used in intercultural communication. The characteristic of high context is that much information is coded faintly rather 
than distinctly because people are more dependent on context. It can be explained that the focal points of profile translation 
of GPHL are not prominent. In contrast, low context is featured by the low amount of information and is not rely so much on 



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context. The meaning of info-3rmation can be expressed clearly, so there is no need to guess based on context. To summarize, 
when the Chinese pharmaceutical company, which is in a high-context country, enters a low-context country, it has to change 
its information from implicit to explicit.
5. Conclusion 
This paper first adopts genre analysis and recontextualization to compare the English company profile between the Chinese 
pharmaceutical company GPHL and the American company Merck. Through this process, translation issues and strategies 
can be discovered for GPHL. The research identifies the following five strategies serving publicity and cross-cultural 
communication were identified: addition, deletion, rearrangement, substitution, and abstraction. And then, it explores the 
recontextualization mechanism in the external promotion and cross-cultural communication and digs out the reasons for 
differences in cultural contexts and the Three Principles of Closeness. It is suggested that this paper can provide a new 
perspective for company profile translation and help construct a discourse system for Chinese pharmaceutical companies. 
However, limitations should not be ignored either. Firstly, the data is limited, and future studies can select more 
pharmaceutical company profiles or among a large group of companies from different industries, countries, or cultures. 
Secondly, statistical analysis and corpus analysis can be applied to increase the objectivity and preciseness of the results. 
Acknowledgments 
As the paper is finally completed, I would like to show my great thanks to my advisor, professor Wang for his long-term 
guidance and valuable suggestions.
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