Skopos Theory and Advertising Translation 英语专业硕士毕业论文.doc

skopos theory and advertising translationchapter i introductionthis part, which serves as the introduction to the thesis, first defines the key term “advertising” and expounds its essential functions, then it moves on to provide a brief review of relevant studies, and finally, it explains the necessity and purpose of the research.1.1 definition and functions of advertising1.1.1 definition of advertisingthe definition of advertising given by the american marketing association (ama) is commonly regarded as the most standard one: 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 jing, 1992:1) .1.1.2 functions of advertisingadvertising is both applauded and criticized for its role in selling products and its influence on society. for years, critics have denigrated advertising for a wide range of sinssome real, and some imagined. the result has been a steady growth in the number of consumer groups, business organizations, and government bodies that now regulate virtually everything that advertisers say and do (arens, 1996:39). anyhow, advertising does play a very important role in both reflecting and shaping our society. five different functions have been identified for advertising. they are briefly discussed below. the marketing functionalong with sales promotion, public relations and personal selling, advertising is one of the vehicles employed by a business or an organization to communicate with its customers. although advertising is only one element in a companys overall promotional program, it is the most visible one (wells, 1989:9). the communication function advertising is a form of mass communication. it transmits different types of market information to match buyers and sellers in the market place. advertising both informs and transforms the product by creating an image that goes beyond straight forward facts. the economic function the two major schools of thought concerning the effects of advertising on the economy are the market power school and the market competition school. according to the market power school, advertising is a persuasive communication tool used by marketers to distract consumers attention from the price of the product. in contrast, the market competition school sees advertising as a source of information that increases consumers price sensitivity and stimulates competition.actually, little is known about the true nature of advertising in the economy. charles sandage, an advertising professor, provides a different perspective. he sees the economic function of advertising as “helping society to achieve abundance by informing and persuading members of society with respect to products, services, and ideas.” in addition, he argues that advertising assists in “the development of judgment on the part of consumers in their purchase practices” (wells, 1995:14). the social function advertising has a number of social functions. it informs us of new and improved products and teaches us how to use these innovations. it helps us compare products and features and make informed consumer decisions. it mirrors fashion and design trends and contributes to our aesthetic sense (wells, 1989:11). the educational functionadvertising, as an educator, speeds the adoption of the new and untried and, in doing so, accelerates technological advances in industry and hastens the realization of a fuller life for all. but advertising must be more than educational to be successful. it must also be persuasive to move people to action, whether that action is the purchase of a different brand of breakfast cereal or regular attendance at church.1.2 literature review1.2.1 tendencies in translation theory developmenttranslation has been in existence since ancient times, but it is mainly marked by literary translation. translation theories develop with translation practice. and there are always debates about translation strategies. although such debates lead to no agreement on translation strategies, yet many translators agree that the process of translating involve both procedures: a faithful reproduction of formal source-text qualities on the one hand, and an adjustment to the target audience on the other.since the 1960s, with the development of modern linguistics, translation studies have come to a new stage. new theories spring out and tend to be more flexible. among all the translation theories two main clues can be clearly seen. one is that translation studies break with purely linguistic translation theory to be a theory combining linguistics (including semantics, syntax and pragmatics), sociology, and intercultural communication. translation is now widely regarded as a “cross-cultural event” (snell-hornby, 1988). the other clue is that the target text reader has been assigned an important role. nidas dynamic equivalence theory emphasizes that the effect the target text creates on the target text reader is similar to that of the source text on the source text reader. relevance theory also places emphasis on the target audience. in gutts view, translation is to provide optimal relevance to the target text reader (gutt, 1991).the action-oriented and culture-oriented functionalist approaches, with vermeers skopos theory as a typical model, go one step further. in the framework of his theory, one of the most important factors determining the purpose of a translation is the addressee, who is the intended receiver or audience of the target text with his culture-specific world-knowledge, his expectations and his communicative needs. every translation is directed at an intended audience, since translating means “to produce a text in a target setting for a targeted purpose and target addressees in target circumstances” (vermeer, 1987).in addition to the two main clues, with social and cultural development, more and more distinct text types have come out, and thus linguists also distinguish different translation typologies. many theories distinguish two main situations. one is that the source text producer intends to communicate directly with the target text reader, but because of lack of language or cultural knowledge of the target text, asks a translator for help. another is that the source text producer does not or may not intend to communicate directly with the target text reader, but a translator, both a receiver of the source text and communicator of the target text does. this distinction of first and secondary communication leads to different types of translation description: covert vs. overt translation (house, 1981), descriptive use vs. interpretive resemblance (gutt, 1991), and documentary vs. instrumental translation (nord, 1997). 1.2.2 a debate on the nature of advertising translationinter-lingual advertising, in its broad sense, including all forms of commercial (and sometimes non-commercial) communications and promotion, from a leaflet to television campaigns, as a form of inter-lingual and inter-cultural communication, has aroused the interests of many theorists and caused debates on this subject.the functionalist school pays more attention to this subject and among them several functionalist theorists illustrate their opinion.to this direct communication situation when source texts “have direct target language addressees, for whom this tt (target text) is as immediately and originally relevant as st (source text) is for the source language addressees” (house, 1981), house proposes a model for such cases under the notion of covert translation. she defines covert translation as a translation which enjoys or enjoyed the status of an original st in the target culture. she calls this type of translation covert because it is not marked pragmatically as a tt of a st but may, conceivably, have been created in its own right. house gives an instance of a covert english translation of a german tourist booklet. it is treated as an instance of covert translation since a tourist brochure is immediately relevant to the target audience.house adopts a functional equivalence approach to translation, that is, the translation should match the original text in function, where function is to be understood as “the application or use which the text has in the particular context of a situation”.but she also indicates that this functional equivalence is, however, difficult to achieve because differences of the socio-cultural norms have to be taken into account. thus the translator has to be careful to take different cultural presupposition in the two language communities into account.honing and kussmaul (1984) base their method on action-oriented and culture-oriented communication theory. they show how functional strategies lead to appropriate solutions to translation problems. they maintain that advertising translation does fall under translation studies and they regard translation of advertisements as functional change:“we are of the opinion that we are dealing here with two equally valid basic types of translationthese two basic types can be designated as functional constancy and functional change. they are completely equally valid and equally legitimate strategies of translation between which the translator has to choose for every text. it is therefore by no means true that functional constancy can be taken into the normal case of translation, whereas functional change is the exotic exception. (gutt, 1992) thus honig and kussmaul propose a theory of translation that does not regard text functions as factors that have to be kept constant in translation, but considers them as variable, too. and variables depend on the purpose of the communication. in their view, a translation can differ in virtually all aspects from the original.honig and kussmaul illustrate functional change by giving examples of transferring english advertisements to german. they point out two different specifications for a translation of this advertisement. one asks for a translation to be used in a study of the marketing strategy of the original company; the other asks for a corresponding advertisement to be used in germany. while the first requires preservation of the content of the original, the second requires preservation of its intention. with regard to the second specification, the authors point out that the aim of preserving the intention of the original can result in a german version in which possibly not a single word would be reminiscent of the “original” (honig & kussmaul, 1984).other theorists adopt a different view. snell and cramton, for example, belong to those who are doubtful whether advertising should be dealt with by translation: “translation has little to do with this fascinating area of communication” (snell & crampton, 1983). despite the heated debate on the nature of advertising translation, it is generally agreed that advertising translation forms direct communication between the source text-producer (sponsor of an advertisement) and the target text reader. thus, the target text shall not be marketed pragmatically as a tt of a st but created in its own right. the information must be relevant to the target audience. under this principle, it is important to consider the varying perspectives of the consumers and their needs. for example, british advertisements tend to be emotional and german ads tend to be more informational (kotler, 2002). so while translating advertisements, it is important to meet the expectation of the target language consumer as to what advertising should be like.understanding the nature of advertising we can consider the standard of a good advertising translation and what theory we should abide by to meet this standard. the author is going to propose the guiding theory of advertising translationskopos theory, which is discussed in detail in the next chapter.1.2.3 domestic studies of the subjectsince the transition from a planned economy to a market economy began in china over 20 years ago, domestic advertising of consumer products and services has appeared as a new text type. and along with the development of advertising business, advertising translation has become a common practice in china. though chinese translators and advertising professionals never debate whether translation should be called translation or adaptation, there have been new studies of advertising translation. most articles or papers about advertising translation are concerned with application of translation strategies. quite a number of scholars advocate two or three translation strategies to the audience and illustrate them with many examples. zhong (2004) advocates and proves literal translation; wang (2002) proposes domestication and foreignization strategies; liu (2001) supports the domestication strategy and chen (1997) approves of the communicative and semantic translation strategies. some of them attempt to address how to translate advertisements, namely “means” for advertising translation, while very few of them make much effort to answer why they should select these strategies instead of others. so far, few scholars have found a theory guiding advertising translation.in general, domestic studies of advertising translation still linger at the starting point. few articles treat translation of advertising texts as a whole in a systematic and scientific manner. and even fewer articles provide a guiding theory concerning advertising translation.1.3 the necessity and purpose of the studythe study of translation of advertising texts from the perspective of cultural elements involved is of great value and practical significance. advertising is not only an economic activity but also a kind of cultural communication which controls peoples life style and consumption habits. the boom of international advertising has been introducing new ideas and culture as well as new commodities and services. clearly, advertising culture is popular, commercial, national and fashionable. therefore, a custom, belief or value, in a certain sense, controls the thought and behavior of commercial traders and consumers, thus affecting advertising activities.the translation of advertising texts is different from that of literature or scientific papers in that the former focuses on economy and culture. advertisements are not created in a cultural void; they are anchored within a certain culture. the language used in an advertisement is not a direct indication of the culture, but a sign system used to communicate in that culture. signs and symbols particular to a specific culture add to the meaning in advertisements. behavior, customs, habits, beliefs and norms form the basis of a culture, and differentiate one culture from another on that basis.a problem arises when advertisements created in one culture are translated for use in another culture. it does not merely mean to find linguistic equivalents in the target language. it also means that a different social frame of reference has to be recreated in the target culture. thus, proper strategies have to be found to deal with cultural aspects when translating advertisements from one culture into another.what translation strategies should be selected for translation of advertising texts? what kind of theory can be proved to be the guiding principle for advertising translation? broadly speaking, few scholars have answered these two questions. that is why this topic is worth researching into.in the next chapter the author proposes skopos theory as the guiding principle for advertising translation, and she maintains that it is the advertising skopos that determines which strategy is the best in a particular case.1.4 the arrangement and main content of the thesisfirst, this thesis presents its introductory part, which includes the definition and essential functions of the key term “advertising”, a brief review of relevant studies and finally, an explanation of the necessity and purpose of the research.chapter two is basically the theoretical part of the thesis. in this chapter, the author advocates vermeer and reisss skopostheorie as a prime principle guiding the translation of advertising texts. the purpose of advertising is to promote products and to persuade audience to purchase them. thus advertising is a very purposeful action, and skopos theory is appropriate enough to serve as a guide to advertising translation.in chapter three, the author focuses on cultural factors or cultural information involved in the translation of advertising texts. it first explains the importance of studying advertising translation from the perspective of culture by presenting cultural differences reflected in advertising texts, then it emphasizes the need to translate cultural elements and to achieve cultural dynamic equivalence, and finally it puts forwards the strategy for translating advertising texts culturallydomestication.chapter three is a practical part of the thesis. the strategy of domestication is employed by the author to deal with a number of examples taken from books, newspapers, magazines or internet. the brand, slogan and body copy are essential to any advertisement and are most likely to be culturally loaded. thus the author assumes that a good translation of these parts contributes greatly to the success of an advertisement, and that whether they are well rendered may influence the survival, development and prosperity of a certain product or service advertised.finally, in the concluding part the author reinforces the critical role which culture plays in advertising translation. according to the audiences psychology and cultural background, the translator must cater for the audiences needs, interests and tastes. the