Chinese-English Corporate Profile Advertising Translation From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

With the development of economy, advertising is becoming more and more significant. It is an essential factor to the success of a company. In order to break into international market, companies try their best to attract foreign consumers. Thus, the translation of corporate profile advertising is vital in international trades.Skopos Theory is the fundamental theory in German Functionalism which came into being in the 1970s. There are three basic rules of this theory. According to skopos rule, skopos determines the whole translation process, that is, whether the purpose of the source text is achieved is the key factor that should be taken into consideration. Coherence rule requires that the translation should be acceptable in the target culture. Fidelity rule refers to the relation between the source text and the target text.Different to literature translation, advertising translation pays less attention to the equivalence in lexical and syntactical level between the source text and the target text. It emphasizes the achievements of the purpose of the original advertising. Compared with other traditional translation theories, Skopos Theory is more feasible in guiding advertising translation. The present study is an attempt to apply Skopos Theory to the practice of translating Chinese corporate profile advertising into English.This thesis is presented in five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction, introducing the background, questions, purpose and significance of the research.Chapter two is a literature review which falls into two parts. The author introduces the related studies of advertising translation in China and abroad.Chapter three is a brief introduction about the theoretical framework of this thesis. The author uses Skopos Theory as the guidance to her study. In this chapter, she introduces the three rules and other important concepts of Skopos Theory.Chapter four is the center part of this thesis. First the author conducts a contrastive analysis between Chinese and English Advertising in order to see their differences in language and culture. Then, the author combines Skopos Theory to advertising translation by analyzing some examples.In Chapter five the author summarizes some translation strategies. She suggests some practical translation methods like literal translation, free translation, transliteration and rewriting in C-Eadvertising translation.Chapter six serves as a conclusion of the whole thesis, pointing out the major findings, limitations of the present research and suggestions for the further study. Through the analysis in the former chapters, the author points that there are many differences in Chinese and English advertising. These differences makes it is not proper to seek equivalence in linguistic level. Skopos Theory is very useful in guiding C-E corporate profile advertising translation. The author suggests that researches on advertising translation should be related to the aesthetic psychology of customers and a survey should be done to test customers'response to the translated advertising to see whether the stratergies proposed are effective.