An Analysis of Advertising Translation from the Perspective of Skopos Theory

1、 an analysis of advertising translation from the perspective of skopos theorycontentsabstract (in chinese) iabstract (in english) iichapter i. introduction1a. relevant background 1b. significance of the study 2c. organization of the thesis4chapter ii. literature review4a. previous study of advertisi

2、ng translation4b. summary7chapter iii. theoretical framework8a. the formation of the skopos theory8b. the principles and rules of the skopos theory9c. the relationship between skopos theory and advertising translation11chapter iv. the skopos theory applied in advertising translation13a. advertising

3、translation guiding by the three rules131. guided by skopos rule13 2. guided by the coherence rule14 3. guided by the fidelity rule15 b. methods for advertisement translation based on skopos theory 161. literal translation172. transliteration173. free translation 194. structure - borrowing method205

4、. amplification216. abridgement/ omission227. adaptation23chapter v. conclusion24a. summary of the study 24b. suggestions for the further study25works cited26 摘要广告是商品在市场竞争中能否取胜的一个重要影响因素，广告翻译对经济的繁荣，国际贸易的发展，国际交流的促进起着越来越重要的作用。本文深入的阐述目的论对广告翻译的指导意义，从而更好的掌握运用广告翻译的方法。掌握好广告翻译方法，不仅有利于更好的学习语言，弄清不同国家的文化价值观，更重要

5、的是能更加有效的宣传本国商品及企业，并对进一步参与国际市场的竞争有着更深远的现实意义。关键字：目的论，广告翻译 ，翻译方法abstractif the commodity can success or not in the market competition, its advertisement is the one of the most important influencing factors. advertisement translation plays a key role in the economic prosperity, world trade development a

6、nd international communication. this paper deeply explains the guiding significance of the skopos theory to advertisement translation, and then helps translators find a better translating method. knowing well of the advertisement and its translation features, not only benefits our language learning

7、and understands more of different countries cultural value, but also propagates our products and companies efficiently and improves our market competitive abilities.key words: skopos theory, advertising translation, translating method chapter i. introductiona. relevant background with the rapid deve

8、lopment of the world economy, advertisements have penetrated into every corner of our life. as is known to all that good advertisements can not only popularize the products and services, but also build up brand reputations, company images and one nations culture. as a result, many entrepreneurs both

9、 home and abroad become aware of the significance of advertisement translation, and make them as part of their marketing strategy.however, the traditional translation is far from satisfactory .advertisement is of a very practical type of writing with high commercial value, and the ultimate purpose o

10、f all advertisements is to promote sales. if the translator rigidly adheres to the original form and content in advertisement translation, the translation may not produce the persuasive effect and may lead to the failure of promoting sales in the target market .therefore, a more practical theory and

11、 translation strategy are called for.as a break with traditional translation theories and an important complement to translation studies, the functionalist concept of translation put forward by some german scholars has opened up a new perspective to the study of advertisement translation. according

12、to vermeers “skopos theory”, any form of translation action maybe conceived as an action, and any action has its purpose. the prime principle determining any translation process is the purpose (skopos) of the overall translation action, and translation strategies and methods. due to the barriers of

13、language and culture, when translated, the advertisement may not be successful to the target audience. only when the original advertisement is adapted to the target language and cultural standard, can the target audiences easily understand what is advertised and be more likely to accept the persuasi

14、on and buy the advertised product. therefore, in order to achieve the special purpose of advertisement, and develop the special persuasive function at its best, a particular translation theory the skopos theory oriented strategy should be taken as the basic strategy in advertisement translation.b. s

15、ignificance of the study the word “advertise” originates from the latin word“advertere”，which means“to make known to the public”. according to websters dictionary, advertising is a kind of activity which draws the publics attention to something，especially by means of paid announcements.according to

16、american marketing association (ama)，advertising is“the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products，services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media”(zhao 1). from the definition of advertising, we can learn the main fu

17、nctions of advertising: advertising provides consumers with information of products and services; arouse the target audiences interest and stimulate their desire while persuading and guiding them; reflecting a nations culture; guide and persuade the target audience to purchase and consume their prod

18、ucts while transmitting information(weng 174). an advertisement is composed of different elements, verbal or non-verbal. the verbal components are headline, body copy, slogan and trademark. the non-verbal components are illustrations, advertising music, advertising sounds, color and layout. in this

19、thesis, the author will discuss the verbal elements only, as it has a particular significance to advertising translation.because of the differences in language and culture, consumers of different countries do not understand the connotations of advertisements or accept the products that are recommend

20、ed in the advertisements if the language in the advertisements were translated word for word or without consideration for different cultural backgrounds. in that situation, the persuasive effectiveness in the source culture may not be produced in the target culture, which would have a great negative

21、 influence on the selling of the product in the target country or region. nowadays, chinas advertisement translation still remains less fully development. thus, on one hand , hope this study of advertisement translation can help our domestic products to go global successfully, and on the other hand

22、further the communication in business culture with other foreign countries.this thesis discusses the german skopos theory and skopos theory oriented advertisement translation methods, hopefully to arouse attention to advertisement translation to better serve chinese economy development.c. organizati

23、on of the thesis this thesis can be divided into five parts: chapter i introduces the advertising development background, and the significance of this study .in chapter ii, literature review on previous study of advertising translation domestic and overseas is made, and also the introduction of adve

24、rtisement including the definition, the features. chapter iii introduces the theoretical framework adopted in this paper, in which some aspects of skopos theory are explained in a detailed way. in chapter iv, as a detailed study of advertisement translation under the guidance of skopos theory, this

25、chapter probes into the basic methods of advertisement translation determined by the translation skopos. in chapter v, a summary and some suggestions of further study are presented by the author.ii. literature reviewa. previous study of advertising translation a great number of scholars of translati

26、on, both domestic and abroad, have different opinions on advertising translation.advertising translation was mentioned for the first time in hurbins article peut-on traduire la langue de la publicitecan you translate the language of advertising, in 1972. hurbins article demonstrates the value of inv

27、estigating advertising translation, by its insights into translation practices in general, and into the way advertising materials are expressed in different languages.(hurbin 24-32) geis the language of television advertising(1982)is another linguistic work in this field. it conducts a description o

28、f the deception in television advertising. its main contribution can be concluded that the approach applied by geis towards advertising language is in accordance with the practical value of advertising research.(geis 55 )vestergaard and schraders the language of advertising (1985) analyzes language

29、use in advertising in sociolinguistic perspective. they expand the scope of the previous advertising studies to the discourse level and highlight several issues of the textual structures such as cohesion, coherence and information structure. they say, “advertisingdoes not try to tell us that we need

30、 its products as such, but rather than the products can help us obtain something else which we do feel that we need.”(vestergaard and schrder 29) since 1995, studies of translation of advertising materials have increased, in line with the emergence of global markets. geoffrey n.leechs english in adv

31、ertising: a linguistic study of advertising in great britain(1996)is the most classic book on advertising language from a linguistic perspective. the book is concerned mainly with the linguistic devices employed by advertisers in their language and many other linguistic scholars are edified to do fu

32、rther study. the author of this book describes what advertising language is like with a quantitative method rather than merely giving his impressions. he applies the linguistic theories of his time to probe into the features of advertising language after an overall analysis of the motives behind adv

33、ertising language and the advertising background.(leech 35 ) methieu guideres translating ads (2000) aims at describing interactions between advertising and translation in the context of globalization. in fact, it deals with the international advertising of multinational corporations, which increasi

34、ngly need to translate their communication campaigns into several languages. in guideres view, the translator should be aiming at an “effective” text, which sells the advertised product or service in the target culture. ( guidere 89)in china, since the transition from a planned economy to a market e

35、conomy has just been going to china for about 20 years, overseas advertising of consumer products and services appears as a new text type. most of these researches are done from the lexical, syntactical or rhetorical perspectives. and some of the scholars just carry out general explorations into adv

36、ertising english. according to the data available to me, at home, professor huang guowen, in his published book theory and practice of discourse analysis-a study in advertising discourse (2001), initiated the detailed study of english advertisement with the combination of the systemic-functional lin

37、guistics. (huang 75)later, tan weiguo analyses the usage of advertising words in his book characteristics of the words in english and chinese advertising(1995).zhao jian-cheng and yu liu-guo (1993)have explored the thematic and model choice in advertising english using the theory of textual function

38、. so far, most of them contribute to the studies of the advertising english, some are trying to address how to translate advertisements, namely means for advertising translation, while none of them attempts to answer why to choose these strategies not others. so far, few scholars find a theory guidi

39、ng the advertising translation. some experts propose the concept that in translating publicity language, translators shall distinguish different target audiences and consider the cultural and ideological differences between different audiences, and go away from total fidelity to the original texts w

40、hen addressing overseas audiences.b. summary in general, the study of advertising translation，few articles treat translating advertising texts as a whole from a systematic and referential point of view. and few articles could provide a guiding theory concerning advertising translation. however, the

41、study of advertising translation is far from being satisfactory, and the traditional translation theories seem increasingly inadequate. under the guidance of traditional theories, some advertisement seems too adhere to the source text and pay no attention to its commodities and services. among the f

42、unctions of advertising discussed above, advertising translation plays a significant role to realize the actual functions of advertising. understanding the nature of advertising, we can consider the standard of good advertisement translation and what theory we can abide by to meet this standard. in

43、my opinion, the skopos theory oriented strategy is the basic strategy of advertisement translation. chapter iii theoretical frameworka. the formation of the skopos theoryskopos is a term loaned from the ancient greek，meaningshooting target. skopos theory applies the notion of skopos to translation a

44、nd it is the prime principle determining any translation process in the purpose (skopos) of the overall translational action. translation can be viewed as a type of human action which must have its own purpose, for any action is intrinsically purposefulthe skopos theory was developed in germany in t

45、he late 1970s. since it reflects a general shift from linguistic and formal translation theories to a more functionally and socio-culturally oriented concept of translation, it has become a welcome addition to translation studies (gentzler,71). initially formulated by reiss in the 1970s, the theory

46、was enunciated by vermeer in the 1980s, and was further developed in the 1990s by nord, one of its most important second-generation scholars.vermeer gave up the equivalence theory and lays the foundation of the functional theory-skopos theory. according to vermeer, translation is a type of transfer.

47、 during the process of translation, communicative verbal and non-verbal signs are transferred from one language into another. in vermeers approach, translation is a form of translational action based on a source text and any action has an aim or purpose .translation is also a kind of human action, w

48、hich is an intentional, purposeful behavior taking place in a given situation. skopos theory focuses above all on the purpose of the translation which determines the translation methods and strategies that are to be employed in order to produce a functionally adequate result.b. the principles and ru

49、les of the skopos theory according to skopos theory, the prime principle determining any translation process is the purpose (skopos)of the overall translational action. (nord 37) skopos is a technical term for the aim or purpose of a translation (vermeer 221). skopos theorists assert that any action

50、 has an aim, a purpose. from their standpoint, translation is considered not as a process of trans-coding (the position usually adopted by earlier non-functionalist approaches), but as a form of human action which has its own purpose basically decided on by the translator. the skopos of a translatio

51、n, vermeer (2000) explains, is the goal or purpose, defined by the commission and if necessary adjusted by the translator. he defines commission as the instruction, given by oneself or by someone else, to carry out a given action which could be translation (vermeer, 229). from this point of view, th

52、e translation process is not (necessarily) determined retrospectively by the source text, its effects on its addressees, or the intention of its author, but prospectively by the skopos of the target text as determined by the target recipients requirements (which are, however, discerned and decided o

53、n by the translator himself/ herself). in the frame work of this theory, there are three essential rules for skopos theory: skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule. (nord,32)skopos rule should be applied to the whole translation process, while other rules can be decided by different situations

54、. the coherence rule says that the target text should be coherent enough for target readers to understand it and the fidelity rule talks about coherence between target text and source text.one of the most important factors determining the purpose of a translation is the address, who is the intended

55、receiver or audience of the target text with their world language. every translation is directed at an intended audience. the theory focuses above all on the purpose of the translation, which determines the translation methods and strategies that are to be employed in order to produce a functionally

56、 adequate result. vermeer regards it as an “offer of information” that is partly or wholly turned into an “offer of information” for the target audience. from this view, the status of the source is clearly much lower in skopos theory than the equivalence theory. in essence, the skopos theory focuses

57、 on translations whose function differs from that of the source text .departing from traditions, the functional approach presumes that the same text can be translated in different ways depending on the communicative function of the target text .guided by loyalty to the skopos ,the translator is free

58、 to produce a new text that differs considerably from the source text in both form and substance. c. the relationship between skopos theory and advertising translation a good advertisement need to achieve the purpose of attracting consumers attention, arousing their interest towards the product, further stimulating their desire to buy the product, helping them to memorize the product and finally to take purchasing action . among above purposes, final purpose or skopos of advertising translation is the promotion of sales. guided by the prime principle the promo