The Application Of Skopos Theory In English And Chinese Cross-cultural Translation Of Advertisements

Language is the carrier of culture. On the one hand, language plays an important part in advertising and advertising translation. The purpose of an advertiser is to present products or services, which must be fulfilled through advertising messages. On this point, the arts of language have to be mentioned. Common assumptions are that an advertisement will be effective if the viewer or reader decodes the advertisement successfully, if there is a meaning transfer of "properties". On the other hand, culture is the origin of advertising language, and it becomes the basic standard in advertising creating and understanding. As the product of culture, advertising can show the close relationship between language and culture. And the advertising language is a special art form which has profound cultural background and can be influenced by the tendency of the day. The traditional translation theory can not satisfy the standard of modern advertising translation, for the main purpose of advertisement is to make the intended customer accept its products or services. Therefore, to have a full and complete understanding of the cultural differences between Chinese and western countries become very important and essential.The thesis is designed to emphasize the role that cultural factors played in the target text in the course of translating by combining Skopos theory, cultural factors, equivalence theory and advertising translation form Skopos theory viewpoint. At the end of this thesis, the author mentioned a new model between Chinese and English advertising translation, called "Skopos-based Cross-cultural Advertisement Translation". The issues and the sequence of advertising translation are all bring forward in this model. It successfully made translation in to a simple and easy work in linguistics.The functional concept of translation was put forward by some German scholars in 1970s. Owing to the great contributions done by Katharina Reiss, Hans Vermeer, Justa-Holz Manttari and Chrstiane Nord, the concept developed into the sound system of the functional translation theory. Different from the equivalence-based theories, it dethrones the authority of the source-text and puts the translation study into the framework of the auction theory and cross-cultural communication theory. This theory tries to liberate translation from the constraints of the source-text and to expound the translating action form the translator's perspective. Any form of translation action, including translation itself, may be conceived as an action, as the name implies. Any action has an aim or a purpose. Due to the cultural differences between languages, it's quite necessary for us to take cultural factors into account. Since every consumer lives and grows up in a certain cultural background, a good advertisement may not be successfully translated if cultural factors are ignored in the process of translating. In this way, how to handle the barriers between cultural factors has become a priority for a translator to think about.The author considers translation as a purposeful action that makes the target text and the source text relevant rather than equivalent. The thesis discusses the translating strategies between Chinese and western countries in a deeper way by analyzing the translated texts from linguistic and cultural points of view. In this thesis, the author also makes a practical study of the examples of advertising translation to analyze how the Skopos theory is applied to advertising translation. Advertising translation is an art as well as science, the ultimate goal of advertising translation is to maximally achieve format equivalence on the basis of functional equivalence.