The Strategies to Avoid Bad Brand Translations.doc

消除不良商标翻译的策略the strategies to avoid bad brand translationsabstractin recent years, there are barriers and risks caused by international culture difference in export corporations of china. now and again, there are cases that the sales of the export commodity are blocked because of mistranslation of brand names. in this paper, through unsuccessful cases, the author wants to make the readers know that an unsuccessful translation to the brand may make the sales of products fall quickly. the basic reason that caused the different results is cultural difference, which really makes the translators have difficulty in translating the brand names. then, how to surmount the barriers caused by cultural difference in brand translation becomes an urgent task for the translators. firstly, for the translators，the characteristics of the brand and commodity should be taken into consideration; secondly, the target countries cultures and the psychology of consumers are involved in translation of the brand names; finally, the translators should pay attention to the innovation and the standardization of the language. in a word, only when the translators improve their skills of translation, should the export of china have a bright future.key words:brand translation; export commodity; culture difference 摘要当前,中国出口企业正面临国际文化差异造成的传播障碍与风险,因商标翻译失误影响商品出口的案例时有发生。本文将通过案例分析说明不成功的商标译名可使产品的销售一落千丈。造成此种现象的根本原因在于语言文化差异。语言文化差异确实给中国译者的翻译工作带来很大的难度,中国译者任重道远,怎样超越语言文化差异进行商标翻译工作成为一个不容忽视的问题。针对这一问题,本文为商标译者提供一些翻译策略:首先,应深入了解所译广告及商品的特点；其次,应了解广告受众国的文化传统及消费心理,了解翻译时应注意的禁忌。最后,要注重创新和语言的规范化。总之,只有提高译者的商标翻译水平,才能从根本上解决中国出口问题。关键词:商标译名；商品出口；文化差异 introduction with the development of the international labor-division and the tense of globally integrative economy, the commodity circulates from state to state frequently. the country which wants to enter into the global market must achieve it by means of advertisement. as the words and time are limited, now in this thesis the author only discusses a part of it-the improper brand translation in china. through the unsuccessful cases of the brand translation, the author wants to make the reader especially the enterprise and the person who engage in the brand translation pay more attention to it. and nowadays china has entered into wto, so the translation will play more and more important role in international communication. so it is certain that the brand translation will be an essential part in the international trade. this article is not an investigation about the skills of the translation but a research of the methods to surmount the cultural difference in brand translation. the brand translation is just like a pair of wings for the enterprise to enter into the global market. while most people think that translation is a difficult work, which lies in the fact that it is difficult for a foreigner to understand the countrys cultural background knowledge. and the brand translation is not just a language transformation problem, and it also has great relationship with the cultural elements, such as: social culture, folk custom, esthetics, psychology, economical market and so on. how to solve the problem effectively? from the point of translators, they should first know the characteristics of the translated brand and commodity; at the same time, they should also understand the target countries cultural traditions and the psychology of consumers; whats more, they should pay attention to the innovation and the standardization of the language. from the point of the export corporations, they should put more investment on the brand names translation. . introduction to brand nameit is well-known that the trademark of the commodity just as humans name, the word has had been usually referred when the manufacturers would like to build a new brand as the public praise. it would be an invisible property to the enterprises.a. edification of brand naming question“a rose by any other names would smell as sweet” was said by shakespeare. it is a pity that he is wrong from the point of marketing. what we see is only what we want to see, what we smell is also what we want to smell. actually, the core that inculcated to the customer is not all kinds of characteristics of the product but mainly brand names. brand names whether perfect or poor have great effect in spreading and selling the commodity. what has been hidden in the brand name? brand name works just like a key, which open the spiritual door that lurked in the customers. the great master of marketing and father of localization theory a. rees points out: “in the times of localization, the most important marketing decision you need to make is to give a name to the commodity.” brand name is the most distinctive sign relied by the customer when they are selecting and buying something. to a large number of products, brand name plays the role as the main instrument of making the brand different from the others.b. necessity of professional correction with the progression of the globally integrative economy, the international trade has become the vital impetus to promote the economical development of the countries in the world. the brand translation then plays an important role on external sales situation. just like the american scholar a. rees said: “brand name translated well or badly, maybe directly leads millions of dollars difference to the sales achievement.” at present, associate professor dang fangli from shanghai finance and economics university points out, the export corporations in our country now are confronting with the barriers and risks caused by international culture difference. now and again, there are cases that the sales of the export commodity are blocked because of mistranslation of the brand names. nowadays, the translated brand has been turned into the important “face” to the products of the enterprises and brand globalization. a good translation to the brand may make the brand well-known; on the other hand, an unsuccessful translation to the brand may make the sales of the product fall quickly. in recent years, although many enterprises of our country have made congratulatory achievement in brand translation when they are ready to enter into the international market, there are still some problems need to be solved. in the following, there are unsuccessful cases about the brand translation of the internal and external enterprises, hoping to arise the attention of the readers especially the translators and the export enterprises.“win at the starting line with a good name” which describes the importance of a good brand translation to the marketing of the corporation said by the experts in brand institute of china. as the brand name is considered to be the “golden business card” in export, and we can see the difficult situation that the export enterprises and the translators must face up, so it is significant to find a professional correction to them and do well in translating.c. values in brand namehow much would a good brand name values in the market? the answer to this question is that we can see from many companies high investments to the name or trademark. the symbol of the american airlines was collected at a high levy of 5.8 billion u.s. dollars. and mobil oil has granted 1.4 million u.s. dollars for the selection of trademarks. the organizational psychology, linguistics, sociology and statisticians have taken six years to investigate about 55 national languages and folk, then advise more than 10,000 drafts, and finally select exxon as its brand which become the world famous brand. nowadays, more and more companies spend millions of even hundreds million funds to the activities of advertisement and promotion. in many of the areas, the noises of the competition are increasing gradually. and how to make the customers hear our voice clearly? as the force of the brand name is rising gradually, most of the investments are put in the brand names whatever the commodity brands or the company brands. the brand name is one of the aspects that never change, and it is the requirement to enter into the global market. so, it is worth of trying our best to the brand translation work, and makes it become one of the invisible properties with great values. . present situation of brand translationmany trademarks of the domestic brands have wonderful connotation in chinese, however, “when in rome, do as the romans” is always obeyed not so well when they are translated into another language, resulting in decreasing of the brand competitive ability.a. unsuccessful cases of brand translation as brand translation is a cross-cultural movement, when our commodities export aboard, we should choose words that are according with language culture and custom in target country. otherwise, the translated name would become the obstruction in export commodity. there are several reverse examples:1. lack of aesthetic psychology the very representative failure appeared in brand translation in the export commodity: our country has been exported one kind of lipstick, which was called “fangfang”. this name was truly very good in chinese, and as soon as the chinese saw “fangfang”, they were unable to restrain in the heart to raise the beauties association: not only as if the consumer saw a beautiful young girl, moreover has probably smelled the fragrance from her body. but its pronunciation was the chinese pinyin “fangfang”, as soon as english reader took a look, they couldnt help have the feeling of terror in the heart. because fang is exactly an english word, one of the meanings is the dogs long tooth, and the other is the snakes poison-tooth. therefore, what the english readers imagined was not the young girl with the lipstick on, but actually the vicious dog or the poisonous snake that makes threatening gestures, just like the chinese image of the “ghost”. because of this failure in translation, the lipsticks sale is probably not difficult to imagine.the scented soap “mifeng” by the literal translation was “bees”, which was supposed to be correspond completely translation. but the english readers didnt like this translation actually. because on the body of the bees there is fabric thorns which cant be seen clearly, so they believed that to scratch the commodity in the body would make them feel uncomfortable. it is certain that this is another unsuccessful case of the corporation which wants to make their commodity enter into the global market. the “maxi” playing card which was transliterated into “maxi puke” was also supposed to be totally fixed the translation skill and the principle. but the translator had not thought absolutely that this chinese brand name happened to be two english words “maxi” (very large or particularly) and “puke” (vomit)(贺川生：1997). the people who played the playing cards many are for entertainment without doubt, and the chinese “maxi” was also a very ideal name, but the english would be shrunk back at the sight of the translated name. not only as it was not joyful for the human, instead had it made one feel disgusting. with such bad translation, how could you desire excessively that the translated name would bring you millions of benefits back? 2. filled with indelicacythe sign “wuyang” for a kind of bicycle was translated into “five goats”. goats may be regarded as not the proper man in english, or the sex maniac, therefore all the men or the women were not willing to ride on it. the gentleman shirt “ziluolan” was translated into pansy. pansy does not have the masculinity meaning, sometimes refers to the man who does the homosexuality. so, parts of the gentleman were very possible not to purchase such kind of shirt.3. impropriety to british and american idiom cultureone kind of export commodity -the dry battery was so-called “baixiang”. in theory, the translation “white elephant” should be 100% correct, but they have never realized that “a white elephant” is a fixed english phrase, which means “a burden possession” or “useless”. “bailing” was a kind of pen made in shanghai. someone translated it into “white feather”. however, in the english speaking countries nobody asked about the commodity, as the idiom “to show the white feather”, which means to escape from the battle and the white feather symbolizes the coward.from the above，all of them are about the chinese enterprises who want to entered into the global market. and the similarity is that all of them are lack of translating the brand name properly into the target countries language. and they are all doing the same thing that is achieving half the result with twice the effort. in other word, brand translation has become the obstruction of the export in china.b. the difference between bad translation and good translationmany well-known international brands from ordinary names were translated into chinese with ingenuity. if we compare the marketing to be a campaign, then a good brand name becomes a flag that never comes down. marketing international brands on a global scale must surmount all sorts of cultural barriers inevitably, like language difference, expense custom difference, and religious difference and so on. so, the overseas brands which have infiltrated the chinese market always have careful consideration to the naming question. it is suggested that we should surmount the linguistics concept and risen to the stratification plane of the cultural psychology and the market relocation. so, suitable cultural transformation is necessary when we convey the original text information faithfully to the target readers. for example, as to the brand “yutu”, why does the translator translate it into “moon rabbit” but not “jade rabbit”? thats because “yutu” was the under trees rabbit which accompanied change to live on the moon in the myth of our country. therefore, it stands for moon. so it is proper to translate it into “moon rabbit” which according to chinese culture. and on the other way, this translation also makes the english readers not misunderstand or mistake it for the rabbit which is made of jade.as to the photo-print machine “rank xerox” from us, the translator in hong kong transliterates it into “lankeshile” which makes the readers so puzzled that they cant catch up with the meaning. latter, it becomes very popular by the translation “quanlu”. “xerox” means “duplicate with printing of static electricity” in chinese, although it doesnt have the same meaning with “entire record”, there is still relationship between them. it is said that the translation “quanlu” with cultural transformation comes from the pen for the god.the lotus root powder from xihu hangzhou is one of the famous nourishments. in history, it had been taken as “articles of tribute” which was offered to the emperors every year. although most of the chinese people knew this point, as to the british and american, they rarely knew. so, when the translator translated “oufen” into “lotus root starch” according to the chinese-english dictionary and advertised it to the foreign consumers, they were not willing to purchase the commodity. thats because it was easy for people to put on weight when they ate the “starch”. and most of the westerners feared to put on weight. after altering it to “powder” or “pudding”, the sales was obviously increased.it is a failure to translate “baixiang” into “white elephant”, but the brand “baixiong” to “white bear” is truly a success. according to chinese-english dictionary written by beijing foreign language institute, one of the meanings is polar bear and the other is white bear. it seems proper to translate it into “polar bear”, but in recent years, the international politic situation has changed. and “polar bear” refers to one of the political influence in the world additionally. therefore, the translation “white bear” is good.the brand “jinji” clock which has a high reputation in china, but there is a minor defect that the translation “golden cock” is not proper. in britain and american, “cock” not only represents “the rooster” but also “the male organ” which causes this translation to be vulgar. in order to make the translation elegant, it is proper to change “cock” into “rooster”. this change can surly make the original text readers and the target readers have the same aesthetic feeling. . reasons for obstructions and ways to solve the problemwhy a commodity with the same brand becomes popular in the native country but often meets with refusal in another country. there is an invisible reason comes from the cultural difference in different nations. and, how to surmount the barriers caused by cultural difference in brand translation becomes an urgent task.a. reasons for obstructions in brand translationin the following, there are three reasons from the points of culture values, psychological structure, and region and humanities environments.1. different culture valuesthe culture values of china have the deep humanism spirit, humans value display through “the introspection”, “deny oneself”. the confucianist initiates “to practice moral culture, the governing, make the world peaceful” which emphasis aware ability on moral standard. professor yang chaoyang with american nationality thinks that: “the chinese pay great attention to the product contents of the advertisement, relating to the real diagnosis. it bases on the religious behavior which has the fatalism color and the overall orientation, the relationship of which establishes on the real diagnosis.” but the westerner pays great attention to the external forms of the product advertisement, reflecting the feeling and view effect.2. different psychological structurethe stable psychology structure in china, which takes “humanity”, “pragmatic”, “endurance” as the basic contents, forms the chinese uniquely cultural psychology. it manifests it in details first for greatly unified idea: atta