中英文广告差异论文.doc

第17页单位代码 04 学 号 090125048 分 类 号 H31 密 级 毕业论文 Translation of Cultural Differences in Chinese and English Advertisements中英文广告中文化差异的翻译 院（系）名称外国语学院 专业名称英 语 学生姓名张三 指导教师李四2013 年 5 月 20 日AcknowledgementsI would like to thank all those who have given me their generous helps, commitment and enthusiasm, which have been the major driving force to complete the current paper. Firstly, I am most grateful to my tutor, Wei Ying, for her valuable guidance and encouragement in all aspects of writing this paper. From the beginning of the preparation to the accomplishment, she has given me a lot of helpful advice and edited it carefully and patiently. Without her brilliant intelligence, profound knowledge, positive encouragement and creative advice and instruction, this thesis could not have reached its present form.Secondly, I would also like to take the opportunity here to thank all of my other teachers, Professor Zhang Linxin, Mrs Sunhao, for their wonderful teaching and valuable comments on the paper. My thanks are also for all of the teachers at the School of Foreign who have instructed and helped me a lot and have spent days checking my paper.Next, My sincere thanks also go to my classmates and my friends in my college, who constantly encouraged me to pursue my studies. They have spent hours checking the paper on weekends and helped me correct many spelling and other mistakes.Finally, I would especially like to mention my parents who have greatly supported and encouraged me during the period of my study. They are the source of my energy. To all of them I give my earnest thanks.Translation of Cultural Differences in Chinese and English Advertisements Author: Li Lingna Tutor: Wei YingAbstractWith the development of the global economy, trades between countries are becoming more and more frequent. Commercial advertisements and its translations play an important role in communication as a bridge. But there are many cultural differences between west and east, it is very important whether the cultural differences are properly handled in advertisement translation, which often directly affects goods whether it can spread market in a foreign market, and even affects the image of the product manufacturers and their business opportunities. This paper not only analyses the cultural differences from aspects of values, customs, consumer psychology and language to illustrate the influences of these differences on advertisement translation, but also explores translation in Chinese and English advertisements from translation principles and translation methods.Key words: advertisements; cultural difference; translation principles; translation methods中英文广告中文化差异的翻译摘要随着全球经济的发展，国家间的贸易往来日趋频繁，商品广告及其翻译起着重要的桥梁沟通作用。但由于中西方存在着较多的文化差异，广告翻译中的文化差异处理是否得当，往往直接关系到商品能否在异国市场打开销路，甚至会影响到产品生产商的形象及其商业机遇。本文既从中西方的价值观念差异、风俗习惯差异、消费心理差异、语言差异四个方面分析了中西文化对广告翻译的影响，又从翻译的原则以及翻译的方法方面探讨了中西方广告的翻译。关键词：广告, 文化差异，翻译原则，翻译方法ContentsAcknowledgementsIAbstract in EnglishAbstract in Chinese1 Introduction 12 Theories of Advertisements and Translation1 2.1 Advertisement12.1.1 Definitions of Advertisements12.1.2 Functions of Advertisements2 2.2 Translation . .32.2.1 Definitions of Translation .32.2.2 Principles of Translation .3 3 Cultural Differences between Chinese and English Advertisements43.1 Different Values43.2 Different Customs63.3 Different Consuming Psychology83.4 Different Languages104 Methods of Translation114.1 Literal Translation114.2 Free Translation124.3 Transliteration135 Conclusion14Notes16Bibliography17Translation of Cultural Differences in Chinese and English Advertisements1 IntroductionEconomic globalization does not only allow foreign goods into china, also makes Chinese goods spread to the world. With the rapid development of Chinas economy, advertisement as the primary means of promoting product is well-known. Advertisement is a kaleidoscope, not only to show the thousands of goods, but also to show the multicultural. However, due to the different cultural background, people in different countries are not identical in advertisement cognition. At the same time, advertisement translation has become an important way which to develop the international market. The main purpose of advertisement translation is to promote purchase, so in advertisement translation, whether foreign people can accept accurate information which advertisement passes is crucial for merchandising. This paper firstly describes theories of advertising and translation, and then it elaborates the cultural differences between English and Chinese advertisements from four aspects of values, customs, consumer psychology, and language; finally, it explores the translation principles of faithfulness, smoothness, elegance as well as translation methods of literal translation, free translation, transliteration. This requires a translator conform to the premise of both cultural traditions, adhere to translation principles and adopt translation methods in order to make advertising target language to cater to the needs of the public. 2 Theories of Advertisements and Translation 2.1 Advertisement2.1.1 Definition of AdvertisementsFirst, according to research, the word of advertisement comes from the Latin advertere, and it means attention, induction, propagation. Then it evolved to advertise at Middle English era (about AD 1300-1475), and its meaning derived “so that someone noticed something” or “notify others something to attract the attention of others.” Until the end of the seventeenth century, the British began large-scale commercial activities, when it was popularly and commonly used. At this point, the advertisement does not only refer to an advertisement, but also to a series of campaign. “Advertise” is given the modern sense as a motionless noun, and it is transformed into “advertising”. Chinese advertising term comes from Japan, and the Japanese also used the “Confessions”, “inform” and other words in the past, some also used by China.Webster Dictionary definite advertisement: advertisement is to strengthen the sales of goods directly or indirectly, to spread some kind of doctrine or information, convened intention to participate in various meetings and rallies all inform activities carried out under the form (Websters Dictionary 1977: 139). 1Advertisement is considered to be the use of a form of media rather than orally passed with the purpose, it aims to arouse the peoples demand for commodities and enterprise production or sales of these commodities to generate understanding and goodwill advertised to provide certain non-profit purposes, and to describe some sort of meaning and insights (Websters Dictionary 1988: 129). 22.1.2 Functions of AdvertisementsFirstly, advertisement contributes to the enterprises. For example: Mengniu Group won a “Standard King” in the CCTV advertising tender with 320 million yuan in 2004. For a frontier dairy enterprise, why does Mengniu can do so? This is because advertisements can bring many benefits to the enterprises, and other means of marketing communication can not play the role in the enterprise development as well as advertising. It is known that advertisements pass the information of the company and its products through careful planning, so that consumers can quickly and correctly understand the enterprises and products. In this way, buyers and sellers can not only enhance their trust and can persuade consumers to buy their products. If advertisements can continuously release to the image of a business and its products, it can shape and cultivate a unique, well received brand image. Secondly, advertisement has a great effect on the whole society. It has an impact on all aspects of our lives when adverting goes into our living environmentAdvertisements can inform people much to catch up with the trend, and meet the various needs of people. Meanwhile, as the main channel for passing information, advertisements can improve the popularity of products, strengthen the speed of exchange between enterprises and consumers and promote the development of social and economic as well. It can also help people who are not freely approach and use public media have a right of communication, which is conducive to social communication and promote the process of social democracy. It is beneficial to build a harmonious socialist society.2.2 Theories of Translation2.2.1 Definitions of TranslationThe word of “translation” can be a verb, and also can be a noun. The interpretation of the Ci Hai: “translation” is that one language can express the meaning of another language, and also refers to the person who engaged in the translation. In daily expression, “translation” as a noun, not only refers to a person who works in translation, but also refers to translated works or target language.Famous masters at home and abroad have many opinions about translation over the years. For example, a famous translator Fu Lei once wrote in the retranslation of Old Man Gao: “from the aspects of effect, the translation should be Like drawing, the request is not like in the shape, but in the spirit; The Chinese translation theorist Mr Huanglong thought that translation may be defined as follows: the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual the material in another language (TL); The famous translation theorists Lambert and Robyns once defines it as: translation is as identical to culture, etc. Since the essence of translation is changing with the development, the definition of translation does not have a fixed standard.2.2.2 Principles of TranslationThere are many translation principles, For example, the principles of “faithfulness, expressiveness, elegance”, “conciseness”, “attractiveness” and “innovation”. But in this paper, the author adopts principles of “Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance” put forward by a famous translator Yan Fu in the Evolution and Ethics in 1897. This principle has gone through the course of the centuries, the ideas of translation are far-reaching, and it plays an invaluable role in the field of translation, until today it still has profound guiding significance for translation theory and practice.Advertisement as a special style is different from other ordinary language styles in lexical, syntax and rhetoric. These special characteristics determine advertisement translation can not be confused with the general translation. When we translate the advertisements, the conventional theory of translation will be difficult to perfectly interpret the translation of commercial advertisements. Therefore, according to characteristics of the advertisement, the advertisement translation must follow some principles and define the standard of “Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance” to apply to the advertisement translation.3 Culture Differences in Chinese and English Advertisements Culture is an accumulation of all the achievements in human history overview. Broadly speaking, it refers to the summation of the material wealth and spiritual wealth created by mankind in the history course of social practice. In a narrow sense, it refers to the ideology of the society as well as the corresponding systems and organizations. It is a complex whole which is made up of the contact of politics, ethics, customs as well as language, literature and religion. It accelerates and expands the flow of information among the company, distribution sector and consumers. In short, the culture refers to the life-style of a society, all the manner of “a nation”. Generally speaking, the cultural differences in the Chinese-English advertising embodies in the following areas:3.1 Different ValuesThere are different values in Chinese and Western. Culture value is a nation long-standing cultural regulation of choice, judgment and resolving conflicts acquisition. As a measurement of the standard of peoples value, it guides or provides people value orientation and subtly influence peoples attitudes and behavior. The values of Chinese culture have a profound spirit of humanism, mainly reflected in “suppression of desires and emphasis sense of honor”, the values of human expression by introspection and self-denial. Confucian emphasizes on ethics to form the character of Chinese people introversion. Chinese people are influenced by the traditional culture so that their conformity is ingrained and they have strong authority worship, they focus on the content of the advertisement, stressing empirical. Chinese culture lays stress on harmony, and the advertisement emphasizes on balance and unity. Western values mainly reflect in “making outstanding talents by selfish desire”, which is said that the character of westerners is extrovert. They pursue change and emphasize value. They like to create things which are new and original, pay more attention to individual personality, often use “personality”, “independent”, “privacy” as its theme, and focus on the external form of product advertisements and pursue their sensual pleasures and value demand. They emphasize on stimulation in the advertising creative so as to show their outstanding personality. Different cultural values lead to different cultural identities. For example:雀巢咖啡伴侣：默默奉献，为香浓加分！（雀巢公司的广告）Nestle Coffee Mate: quiet dedication fragrant extra points! 1 (Advertisement of Nestle Company)This advertisement stresses dedication. However, in the United States, its advertising is “coffees perfect mate” （咖啡的完美伴侣）! “Partner” indicates an equal relationship between coffee and coffee mate, if they can integrate, it will be able to have a mellow and delicious coffee. If the Chinese advertisement is directly translated into English, it is afraid that it will not give a good impression to American consumers. Because Americans believe that everyone is equal, they advocate freedom and individualism. “Quiet dedication” will make them feel lost, blindly follow others. This example illustrates that different culture determines different values. Another example: Each owns a different WATERMAN pen. For while style is key, individuality is everything. 2 (A slogan of Waterman Hemisphere pen)译文：每人都拥有一支与众不同的沃特曼半球钢笔，风格是重要的，但个性也相当重要。(沃特曼半球钢笔的一句广告语)In this slogan, the English words intend to emphasize “personalization” and highlight the self-style. If the last sentence literally translated as “personality is everything”, it will conflict with humility and same ideological in the Chinese culture; so that Chinese consumers have no desire to buy it. In translation, the original “everything” translated into “very important” is tactful than the tone of the original. It conforms to modern Chinese grammar and habits with the word “up”. This example illustrates if we ignore the difference of value orientation in English and Chinese cultures in the process of advertisement translation and only copy blindly, it is difficult to achieve the ideal effect of translation.3.2 Different CustomsCustoms and habits are formed in the long-term production with the stability of behavior norms and social habits, they reflect the cultural difference and thought in the different ethnics. For example, the festival culture in Chinese folk customs is an important carrier of advertising information. Traditional festivals are often the peak of the consumption, and also are hotspot of advertising planning. If modern advertising artistically reflects these holiday customs, it is bound to be accepted. And western advertisement is humorous, funny, witty. So the cultural differences and conflicts are everywhere and at all times. They have impacts on peoples perspective of observing things and the way of generalizing things with the most impressive and the most delicate methods. Though people of the east and the west are different on the aesthetic, they all pursue good fortunes and avoid disasters. Therefore, we must respect the culture and customs of the east and west in the process of advertising translation, carefully apply to words. If we ignore the customs of the recipient country, cross-cultural advertisement is bound to be unsuccessful.For example: a Sino-foreign joint venture stores plays an advertising of gold jewelry: OK! Our gold jewelry is really OK. 3 (OK! 本店黄金首饰确实OK)This advertisement applies free translation to “OK”, it originally wants to create something new, but in fact it is self-defeating. The fineness of gold in the eyes of the Chinese is measured by the number of K. 99.99 gold is 24k. The less K number is, the worse the fineness. “OK” in the slogan seems to 0 (zero) K. Who will buy this gold? This advertising is not only failed to play the role in publicity quality and promotion items, they should not have caused negative impact.Another example: 金鸡鞋油, 颜色有黑、棕、白、红、黄等。 “Golden Cock shoe polish comes in black, brown, white, red, yellow, blue, and so on”. 4 Many brands of Chinese products are “gold”, because “gold” in Chinese means precious quality. Similarly the “rooster” is always justified in Chinese culture. Therefore, if we treat “chicken” as “Golden Cock” and automatically translate it into “Golden Cock”, we make a taboo, because we ignore the cultural differences of the target readers. “Cock” in English also refers to the male genitalia.Thus, language is conventional. It is the product of the life experience of social members and customs. So different social practices will inevitably be reflected in the respective language, it can also cause hostility to products if we do not pay attention to the customs. For example, in Chinas feudal society, “d