Intertextuality And Advertising Translation

Intertextuality has now attracted more and more interest from scholars in various fields and become a hot topic in translation studies. Many translation theorists have devoted themselves to its theoretical research. However, the practical research on its translation methodology is still lacking in efforts.The present thesis attempts to analyze how the intertextuality theory can be applied to advertising copywriting and translation to make advertisements much more effective in promoting product sales. By doing so, this thesis aims at probing into a proper translation technique to improve the current situation of advertising translation.This thesis is composed of four chapters.The thesis begins with the first chapter pertaining to related research about intertextuality. Since its coinage in the sixties of last century, this notion of intertextuality has undergone great changes and evolvement. The theoretical foundation of intertextuality is introduced and two important poststructuralist viewpoints—those of Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes— are expounded in this chapter.Chapter 2 is concerned with the introduction of the theory into translation studies and its effects on translating process. First this chapter elaborates the relationship between intertextualtiy theory and translationand how this theory can help the translator to go through the whole translating process by introducing Basil Hatim & Ian Mason's relevant theory. Then functions of intertextuality used in translation are expounded with some translated versions being analyzed.Chapter 3 explores the workings of intertextuality in advertising language. In this chapter, a general study of advertising, including the definition of advertising, functions of advertising, features of advertising language, is first carried out, which provides a solid basis for the following analyses since good creation and translation of advertisements will be affected or determined by those elements of advertising. Several intertextual relations that are frequently used in advertising are also introduced in this chapter.Chapter 4 constitutes the main body of this thesis, which focuses on the application of intertextuality in advertising translation. This chapter is composed of three parts. The first part mainly analyzes functions of the translator in advertising translation, which provides the implication why the translator could adopt the technique of intertextuality in translating. Then some mistakes in advertising translation are discussed in the second part, which leads to the analyses of functions of intertextuality applied to advertising translation in the third part. Through the analyses, it's believed that the application of intertextuality can help translators to confront their challenges and solve their translation difficulties, andfinally the author draws the conclusion that although advertising translation often turns out to be a tough task involving many cultural obstacles, the application of kinds of intertextual references can provide the translator with an effective method to achieve a successful translation with the roughly same functional equivalence in the target language.The chapters in this thesis have all been written with one theme in mind: the applicability of a theoretical model to practical pursuits of advertising translation and creation.