Cultural Transfer In Translation Of Advertisements

Nowadays, advertisements spread over every corner of the world and are closely connected with human beings' daily life. They constitute, reflect and communicate our national culture in various ways. As an economic activity, advertising is to promote sales. In order to stimulate customers' desire for consumption and achieve the final purpose of promotion of advertising, cultural elements and emotional appeals are often applied. In this way, advertising and culture are bound together through the promotion purpose. Such relationship is much more complicated on the international stage than within a single market, because cultural transfer is necessary between different cultures.This thesis hereby is intended to study cultural issues which set limitation on translation of advertisements and to explore corresponding orientations from the perspective of theoretic theories, especially skopos theory. Through a contrast of culture between the Chinese and English advertising, it points out that cultural universals and cultural differences are the major issues involved in translation of advertisements. In order to shed light on the two issues, the thesis studies cultural universal based on human beings' universal biological needs and explore cultural differences from both linguistic and non-linguistic angles. Linguistic differences are studied in terms of structure, phonology, semantic, aesthetical standard and rhetorical devices while cultural differences in non-linguistic terms are classified into cultural blank and differences in such aspects as customs and ethic standards, values, religion and legislation. In light of the two cultural issues discussed and guided by the promotion purpose, this thesis proposes three cultural orientations in translation of advertisements: localization, globalization and combination strategy. In order to illustrate the three orientations, cases of both Chinese and English versions are studied.Theoretically, a systematic study of cultural issues and cultural transfer in translation of advertisements can contribute to further development of the "cultural turn" in translation studies. Practically, a general map of cultural issues involved in international advertising will facilitate us to manoeuvre cultural factors in the translation of advertisements by choosing an appropriate orientation. The three proposed orientations can help international corporations achieve the best promotion results in international markets.