Corporate Communication

Abstract

Establishing a worldwide corporate identity is a priority for most organizations nowadays. To do so, they generally include in their corporate websites ELF self-presentations that were either initially written in the companies’ home language for their home audiences and simply translated into ELF, or written in ELF with an international audience in mind. However, can these self-profiles achieve their trust-building objective with audiences that are unknown but for their ability to understand the language? In other words, does the cross-border linguistic transfer of the content and rhetoric underpinning their presentations work well? A case study of self-profiles produced in China and France points to discrepancies that not only indicate a possible negative answer, but also that the ideal company image that organizations are striving to convey differs with their cultures. Some rare companies show that adaptation to local communication styles and culture could help corporate communication to fare better.