The Translation and Application of Advertising English in Cross Culture 英语专业毕业论文.doc

the translation and application of advertising english in cross culture摘 要本文从跨文化的视角来分析广告语在翻译中的技巧及运用中应秉承的规则。在不同的文化背景下，充分了解文化与文化的关系，从语音、语义及修辞三个方面分析跨文化中广告语的翻译，文章通过不同的文化心理、价值观念、思维方式及审美观点来诠释广告翻译中的问题，树立起文化差异对广告翻译有重大影响的意识。本文分为六个部分第一部分介绍和最后一部分结论。中间四个部分主要分析广告英语的主要翻译方法和跨文化因素对广告的影响。由广告语的特点来进一步探讨其在词汇、句法等各个方面应用中应注意的规则，最终使广告翻译达到促进文化交际的目的，使其规则特点在运用中得到完美体现。关键词：跨文化、广告翻译、广告运用abstractthis paper attempts to study the techniques in advertisement translation from cross-culture perspective. under different cultural background, the translation of advertising english presents different characteristics. on the basis of understanding the relationship between the culture and culture, we should develop the awareness of cultural differences that have an essential bearing upon advertisement translation. most problems in advertisement translation concern the core of culture: cultural psychology, values, way of thinking and aesthetic interest, varying between english and chinese. this paper will be presented in six parts. the first part is the introduction and the last conclusion. the focus of the paper is laid on the four middle parts which respectively analyze translation methods and cross culture factors in advertising. analyzing how to applicant the advertising at lexical, syntactic and other aspects language features. this paper is drawn from the data analysis. in the analysis, examples from the corpus will be offered to make the paper understandable and persuasive.keywords：cross-culture advertisement translation cultural differences contents1. introduction.42. a brief survey of advertising42.1 definitions of advertising42.2 history of advertising52.3 advertising elements63. advertising translation in cross- culture63.1 culture and translation73.2 the methods of advertising translation94. cross-culture factors in advertising translation124.1 the religions and customs on advertising134.2 impact of value differences134.3 impact of different ways of thinking144.4 impact of different aesthetic views145. advertising application in linguistic155.1 english lexical in advertising155.2 english syntax in advertising175.3 english rhetorical in advertising206. conclusion221. introductionas the development of economic globalization and trade intensification, more and more companies have to communicate with consumer of different language and culture. especially with chinas enter into the wto. our domestic market must be open up to foreign market. in order to help our domestic producers better compete with their foreign counterparts in both home and overseas markets, we must take positive publicity offensive for our domestic products. under such circumstances, it is very necessarily to do a farther research2. a brief survey of advertising2.1 definitions of advertisingadvertising means different things to different people. but to almost everyone of the public, it is a source to get information about commodities or services they are to require. so advertising can be best defined from the standpoint of those who use it and pay for it.the following are several authoritative definitions of advertising:advertising consists of media message paid for and signed by a business firm or institution that wishes to increase the probability that those reached by these messages will behave or believe as the advertiser wishes them to behave or believe.advertising is any controlled form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor that is used to inform and persuade the selected market.3advertising presents the most persuasive possible selling message to right prospects for the product or service at the lowest possible cost.advertising is the nonpersonal communication of information, usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature, about products (goods and services) or ideas by identified sponsors through various media.advertising is a paid, mass-mediated attempt to persuade.although the expressions in the above statements are quite different, there is something in common in them.i. advertising reaches us through channels of communication referred to as media (such as radio, tv, newspaper, magazine, billboard or computer).ii. advertising is non personal; it is directed to groups of people rather than individuals. these groups might be teenagers who enjoy popcorn or grown-ups who care about the index of nasdaq stock market.iii. most advertising is paid for by sponsors. sponsors, such as pepsi, siemens and general motors, pay for the time and the space they use to get their message across. however, there are some exceptions, such as the advertisements of the international red cross, which are presented by the media at no charge. these non-profit and political advertisements are only intended to popularize an idea, an attitude, a viewpoint and a social cause.iv. advertising is intended to be persuasive. the fundamental role of advertising is to enhance brand awareness and win converts to the products. the message has the explicit purpose of increasing sales through persuasion. the sponsor of advertising is identified. actually, in most cases the prime purpose behind advertisements is to help identify the sponsor. in addition to promoting tangible products, advertising is also used extensively to help sell services and increasingly to sell a wide variety of ideas: economic, political, religious and social.2.2 history of advertisingadvertisement emerged from the womb of commodity production and exchange. the condition for the existence of advertising is “at least a segment of the population must live above the subsistence level”. when this situation occurs, it also becomes necessary for “the producers of materially unnecessary goods to do something to make people want to acquire their commodities.”the embryonic form of advertising in the world is street cries, which exist even today. advertising was not unknown in ancient greece and rome, but advertising as we recognize did not start until the seventeenth century in the west. it was at about this time that newspapers began to circulate. before that, it is printing, which was invented in china and then introduced to the west, that played a vital role in the development of print advertising. “classified” (small advertisements) types of advertising were dominant before the nineteenth century and the style and language used in advertisements at that time tended to be direct and informative. the industrial revolution, which began in england in the mid-1700s and spread later to the united states, fueled mass production of goods. meanwhile advertising became more and more important in the industrial market. the great breakthrough for advertising came only in the late nineteenth century, when technology and mass-production techniques were sufficiently developed for more firms to be able to turn out products of roughly the same quality and at roughly the same price. this brought on a crisis of over-production and under-consumption, which meant that the market demand had to be stimulated artificially. it was at this time that advertisers found it necessary to shift the function of advertising from proclamation to persuasion. in the twentieth century, advertising developed rapidly alongside the advent of new mediaradio, television and internet in succession.2.3 advertising elementsa complete written advertisement (newspaper, magazine) is usually composed of headline, body copy, slogan, illustrations and colors, trademark, and brand name. these elements are named as visual elements. other kind of elements-audio elements- are advertising commentary, advertising music and advertising sounds. in these elements, headline, body copy and slogan are the most important elements in an advertisement.3. advertising translation in cross- cultureunder any cultural background, the advertising function is the same, which needs to adopt a particular form of a vector, open and widely disseminate information to the community. in addition that advertising help consumers understand the role of commodities, it also induces consumers feelings, arouses desire to purchase and promotes consumers psychological action, and enjoys the aesthetic interest of consumers. this process is reflected by several functions of advertising english. gradually advertising english developed its own distinctive characteristics in phonetics, semantics and rhetoric. when translating into the target language, one specially needs to pay attention to the coordinated words and expressions to conform to the customs and culture of the target language. it is widely accepted that translation is an intercultural communication. translation becomes impossible if it is separated from the interpretation of the relationship between language and culture, and the discussion of functional equivalence provides us with the ultimate goal which brand name translation is intended to achieve. finally, theory of adaptation serves as a tool for the exploitation of brand name translation as a particular form of using language. in this chapter we shall take a look at these related concepts as well as the application of theory of adaptation. all these are the necessary components of the theoretical framework on which the present study could have been built.3.1 culture and translationculture, which has been heatedly debated in the translation field, is an extremely complex, multidimensional, and all-encompassing subject. according to the definition given in the new encyclopedia britannica , culture is “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behaviour”. “culture thus defined consists of language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies, and other related components.” and in the encyclopedia americana , culture is defined as the most general concept to describe human behavior and history. it refers to innumerable items at different levels of generality: ideas, sentiments, values, objects, actions, tendencies and accumulations.as a matter of fact, although more than a hundred definitions have been given to culture, all anthropologists agree that culture consists of the learned ways of behaving and adapting, as contrasted to inherited behavioral patterns of instincts. social scientists have divided culture into a series of institutions orgroups of activities with specific need-satisfaction functions. family, education, economics, politics and religion are the most familiar ones.culture and language are indispensable to each other. culture can never be discussed without mentioning the language used in it. according to peter newmark , culture refers to “the way of life and its manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expression.” culture is an extremely complex concept and an enormous subject, which embraces almost everything in the world, whether material or spiritual. language is intrinsically bound up with culture and no linguistic text can exist out of a certain cultural context. language is the means through which culture is expressed while culture embodies language at the same time. different languages codify the world in different ways. the acceptance of culture is limited by the diversity in the categories of culture and particularly by the diversity in language-culture and mental culture. language, of course, is the most important code of all for the transfer of culture. on the one hand, being an intrinsic part of culture, language carries culture, mirrors culture, spreads culture, and helps develop culture. on the other hand, language is strongly influenced and shaped by culture in various aspects of our life.translation is not simply a process of decoding languages, but the process of intercultural or cross-cultural communication. due to the fact that people from diverse cultures vary sharply in their criteria ranging from perception, evaluation, and attitudes to religions, lifestyles and stereotypes, translators can hardly avoid cultural interpretation in the translating process. in a word, cross-cultural competence is absolutely needed for effective translation. as nida points out, “for truly successful translating, biculturalism is even more important than bilingualism, since words only have meanings in terms of the cultures in which they function.”as far as culture is involved in translation, brand name translation is no exception. brand names are not isolated units of language. they are information chips deeply rooted in the cultural soil. as a particular form of translation, brand name translation is not simply a matter of finding equivalent expressions in the target language for the source brand name, but a process of transplanting cultures as well. therefore, heightening brand name translators sensitivity to the dynamics of culture is a prerequisite for translation if the target brand names are to be operative and effective.3.2 the methods of advertising translation3.2.1 the use of pinyinbecause chinese is a pictographic language, pinyin system was created to help people to pronounce the chinese characters. the method of pinyin, which is exclusively used in the translation of chinese brand names, has been very popular in the 50s and 60s of the 20th century in china. even today, there are still a number of chinese brand names translated in this way, for instance, the chinese brand name of shower “中野” being translated into “zhongye”, the chinese brand name of water dispenser “三和” being translated into “sanhe”, etc. despite its popularity, the method of using pinyin has certain limitations. though it also uses latin alphabet, it does not convey any meaning, nor does it conform to the international phonetic system. therefore, most of the brand names translated in this way are hard for english-speaking consumers to pronounce, not to mention to memorize. naturally, the product message involved in the source brand names can not be conveyed to the target receptors. admittedly, the use of pinyin should not be regarded as translation; rather it should be called transcription.3.2.2 literal translationliteral translation is also one of the main methods used in translating brand names. many brand names, both english and chinese, have been rendered in this way: the chinese brand name of tv set “熊猫” being put into “panda”, the english name of “crown” into the chinese name “皇冠”, the english name of mens accessories “crocodile” into the chinese “鳄鱼”, to name just a few. this method is not always effective due to the fact that the source brand name sometimes carries poor meanings in the target culture.3.2.3 homophonic transliterationthe pronunciation can cause different responses to the hearing resulting in psychological stimulation, or tender, or shooting, or vigorous, or imposing. with different language and cultural background, the same voice would trigger different results and reactions.transliteration is to write or spell a word, or a name in the alphabet of another language, which is mainly used in the translation of proper names from one language into another. homophonic transliteration refers to choosing words which sound closest to the original brand name. it is generally believed that the adoption of this method can help to achieve various purposes. for example, the toshiba corporation of japan had been used in advertising language sentence: “toshiba, toshiba, everyones toshiba”. this is the sentence of advertising lyrics. in process of translation, the former two toshiba used by japanese toshiba model pronunciation, then some young people jokingly used it to study a homonym of 偷去吧, 偷去吧, 大家的东西 in chinese. the original meaning was distorted, and can not present the positive effect of original advertisement. another case, china had a lipstick marked fang fang, in the chinese language, the name is very good, and easily makes the consumers imagine a beautiful girl: not only appears a lovely girl in front of you, but you also seem to smell the perfume floating from her. when the chinese trademark is directly translated into fang fang, the english readers would play a sense of terror when taking a look at it, because the word in english means the tooth of a terrible monster, the meaning is (1)a long, sharp tooth of a wolf; (2)a snakes poison-tooth. therefore, they thought the lipstick was not the image of a beautiful girl, but the fierce animosity spill or something, just as the chinese people have seen the blue evil. thus, the intent of advertisements is distorted, and the original idea is lost. of course, there are also many excellent advertising models, which overcome voice differences, they not only reflect properly the local culture, but also appeal the consumers to accept, and purchase. 3.2.4 semantic transliterationlanguage is a part of culture, and is the carrier of culture. it reflects a nations identity, which is the vast reservoir of national life view, the way of life and thinking. semantic transliteration is a combination of the phonetic transcription and semantic manipulation of the original word. comparatively speaking, semantic transliteration is a quite ideal way of translating brand names, since the target brand name not only bears the similar homophonic pronunciation of the original but often conveys partly, if not all of the semantic messages of the source brand name. at least the target brand names are specially chosen to have favorable meanings in the target language. for example, the bailing(白翎) pens made in shanghai is translated into english as white feather.” there are no buyers in english-speaking countries. the reason lies in a sentence of english proverb to show the white feather meaning “flee away when one