Chinese-English Translation Of Commercial Advertisements

This paper studies advertising translation from the perspective of communication theory. Here, the translation of advertisements is regarded not as a process of linguistic transformation but as a special form of mass communication. First the elements and process of mass communication in general are described and then the communication principles proposed by Wilbur Schramm for achieving the intended effects are introduced. These communication principles are further developed for the use in advertising translation. As a special form of cross-cultural mass communication, the basic communication process is similar, but the major participants (the sender and the receiver) are from different linguistic and cultural communities and live in different social, economic and political environment. As a result, for this special form of communication to be effective, the translator needs to make some adaptations in the translation process in order to produce effective ads. In this paper, four groups of influential factors are identified and analyzed, namely, linguistic, cultural, social & economic and regulatory. We hope that they can help readers gain comprehensive awareness of influential factors involved in this specific area of translation practice and make justified decisions in the translation process. Based on the above analysis and justified by Skopostheorie, several translation strategies are suggested and illustrated with authentic examples.