A Study On Brand Name Translation From The Perspective Of Cultural Psychology

Despite a significant role played in social lives, brand name translation had hardly drawn any attention from Chinese translators until around1994, when really important studies on this topic began. The studies on brand name translation in China at the beginning were concerned more with the translating skills and principles, and then the focus of these studies gradually shifted to cultural elements as many complicated problems appeared in the translating practices. But what most of such kind of studies dedicated to is pointing out the cultural differences through the analysis of examples in brand naming or brand name translation and few of them are based on some related theories. The originality of the present research is its inquiry into the issues of cultural tradition and national psychology involved in brand name translation in the light of Cultural Psychology.This thesis begins with a macroscopic study of cultural psychological elements reflected in brand naming and brand name translation, involving the discussion of the similarity, discrepancy, and mutations of cultural psychology according to the theorists who view cultural psychology as disjunctive. The subsequent part is a microscopic study of cultural psychological elements reflected in the brand name translation, mainly focusing on the sound, form and meaning of brand names and their translation.Through the above descriptive analysis accompanied by many examples of the original or translated brand names, this thesis comes to a conclusion that brand name translation is an activity involving many cultural psychological elements the handling of which will prominently influence the effects of such translation. So, a translator of brand names must take into account the similarity, discrepancy, and mutation of cultural psychology as well as the cultural psychological elements contained in the sounds, forms, and meanings of brand names. Then versatile and flexible translation methods can be used to present the information and the connotations of original names so as to maximize their functions in dissemination and promotion, rendering it a key for opening the wider market.