An Analysis Of Fuzzy Meanings In Advertisements Translated Into Chinese From The Skopos Theory

As a purposeful commercial activity, advertisement for commodity aims to lureconsumers to purchase the products. China is a huge market with the largest population in theworld, which captures the eyeballs of most merchants abroad. It becomes very significant totranslate those commodity advertisements into Chinese, and then more products abroad can betransmitted to China. Whether the translation succeeds or not depends on its capability ofcorresponding to the language habits and cultural background of target consumers.Fuzzy language is a common means of commodity advertisements, which makes naturallanguage more vivid and endows it with stronger expressive force instead of blurring it.Besides, the indeterminacy created through fuzzy language allows target readers to participatein the advertisement activity and finally trigger their desire to purchase the products. As aresult, only when the fuzzy language is translated into Chinese properly, the advertisementwill function well. In recent years, there appear many papers on advertising translation, andpeople pay increasing attention to the fuzzy language involved in advertisements.Nevertheless, researchers mainly devote themselves to investigating the function andapplication of the fuzzy meaning. Very few articles mention how to translate them from theSkopos Theory. Until now, there has not formed a complete system in this field or concordantrequirements and standards, therefore, the translation quality can not be guaranteed.In the1970s, Vermeer, a German functionalist, proposed the Skopos Theory.Translation is regarded as a communicative activity, and every activity has a purpose. Theprocess of translation involves the purpose of translators, the communicative aim of the targettext and the end that the specific translating strategies tend to achieve. The whole process oftranslation activity is absolutely determined by the purpose of translation. As a specialpractical style, advertisement is of much commercial value, playing a significant role inpromoting products and tempting consumers to take action. As advertisement translation has not formed a unified norm, and there are few studies on the translation of fuzzy meanings inadvertisements, hence how the translation activity is evaluated depends on whether thetranslated version can capture the target readers’ attention and lure them to take action or not.In this way, it is of great theoretical significance and practical value in guiding the translationof fuzzy meaning in advertisements enlightened by the Skopos Theory. According to thetheory, during the process of translating the fuzzy meaning into Chinese, translators canchoose appropriate strategies freely to reach specific purposes. Therefore, the Skopos Theoryis applicable to such purposeful advertisement translation. In the mean time, the translatingprocess involves the purpose of the translators and the advertisers.The thesis is to analyze the fuzzy meanings from the perspective of the Skopos Theory.It describes more than160pieces of advertisements collected through Times, Readers’ Digest,Newsweek, Beijing Review, English Digest, Xinmin Weekly, New Returnees in the year of2013. What the fuzzy meaning is realized in advertisement and how the purpose of translationdetermines the translating strategies will be both analyzed in detail. A great many practicalcases will be listed to demonstrate that the fuzzy meaning can actually express informationeffectively and accurately and attract the target readers’ attention, leaving a deep impression.It can be said that the fuzzy meaning makes perfect sense. Specifically, the thesis studies thefuzzy meaning in advertisements at the vocabulary, syntactical and rhetorical level to figureout their specific realizations. Through the two purposes reflected during the translationprocess, the strategies for translation are achieved, which may provide a guidebook to thefuture study and increase the efficiency and reduce costs. As we know, that is what merchantsappeal to.From what is mentioned above, it is known that the Skopos Theory asks the skopos ruleto be regarded as the principal rule for translation. In order to achieve the specific translatingpurpose, different strategies can be employed, which suits the special style of advertisementwith clear ends. Hence the Skopos Theory can instruct the translation practice effectively. Asfor the fuzzy meaning in advertisements, translating strategies can be based on particularpurposes of translators and advertisers, such as keeping fuzziness, adding fuzziness, deletingfuzziness or modeling translation and so on. The translated advertisements need to adapt tothe language habits and cultural backgrounds of target readers and to satisfy the end ofpromoting the products. In this sense, it is easier for target consumers to accept the productsand even to take action to purchase. Actually, the biggest problem existing in the thesis is thepractical cases. If a specific kind of advertisement containing fuzzy meaning and E-C versionsis regarded as the object, the cases will be very limited, therefore, the thesis includes many kinds of advertisements in various genres. Maybe that seems less reliable, but a qualitativeand quantitative analysis will be conducted by quoting a great many cases to make up for thatimperfection.