A Study On The Approaches Of Motivation And Adaptation In Brand-name Translation

The present study largely derives from a feeling of increasing unease about the status quo of Chinese brand-name translation. The Chinese businesses are facing with fierce competition since China's entry into the WTO. The author is convinced that it is now a matter of urgency to make it clear how we should conduct the problematic brand name translation. This thesis concentrates on the study of the Chinese translations of foreign brands as well as the English translations of Chinese brands with the hope that it may help to name and translate brands.With a retrospective presentation of the related literature in translation studies and brand naming, the author observes that most researches linger on describing translating techniques superficially or concentrate on the exposure of cultural differences. This paper attempts to provide a holistic exploration of the translating approaches by integrating other researches into the practice of brand-name translation.The whole thesis consists of 5 major parts:The introduction part attempts to make a comprehensive study and comment on the history of brand-name translation studies. This makes the starting point of the whole paper by pointing out the contributions and shortcomings of the studies. At the same time, the author states her sources of theoretical basis, the theoretical frame, sources of data, methods of researching, and those creative points she has made.The first chapter will first make a general survey of brand name translation and tell us that it is essentially a renaming process, which allows for great creativity of the translators. Here the characteristics of brand-name translation are laid out to prove that the two essential approaches of brand-name translation are motivation and adaptation.The second chapter will focus on the approach of motivation and how the translated names remain the motivation of the source language, culture, and the signified product. It brackets two major points: the motivation of the source names, both phonetically and semantically, and the motivation of the signified products, mainly pragmatically. The ways of intuition as well as assosiativeness are analyzed to enhance the discussion.In the third chapter, the author copes with the adaptation approach and how the translated names adapt themselves to the target language and culture. This also includes two significant aspects: the language use adaptation, both on the sound pattern level and diction level, and the cultural cognitive adaptation. The discussion of both linguistic and non-linguistic respects enables the paper to be more scientific.With detailed classifications and reasonable analysis, the author comes to the conclusion part of this paper. As a renaming process of the brand names, the translated names should be the results of the translators' comprehensive considerations and careful choices of the aspects of the motivation and the adaptation approaches.This paper will deal with the question based on the description and analysis of numerous examples, both the Chinese translation of foreign brand names and the English translations of Chinese brands. These are all casually drawn from real life so that the discussion will be more convincing.