On The Translation Of The Store Names: From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

With China’s opening up towards the outside world, especially the development ofthe globalization and economic integration, more and more foreign retail stores orchain stores are attracted to China to expand their business. An excellent translatedstore name not only plays an important role in exploring Chinese market but alsocontributes to the establishment of a good image and reputation of the store, while apoor translated store name often results in costly failures, and even damage to theimage of the store or company. Meanwhile, Chinese commercial enterprises alsomake efforts to expand their businesses to foreign markets. Therefore, it is a must forChinese operators or runners to give their stores or companies appropriate Englishnames. Under such circumstances, the study on the translation of store namesbecomes very significant, urgent and necessary. This thesis attempts to make atentative study on store name translation and help to improve the competitiveness ofChinese companies in the global market.This thesis adopts Skopos theory as the theoretical foundation and guidance instore name translation. The Skopos theory does not limit translation at linguistic level;it attaches more importance to intended functions of target text in target language andculture. It entitles the translator much freedom to adopt flexible translation strategies.Based on the collection of100Chinese and English store names and analysis oftheir characteristics, functions and naming strategies, this thesis also summarizescommon strategies in translating store names, namely, transliteration, literaltranslation, free translation, and combination of transliteration and free translation.The thesis reaches the conclusion that Skopos theory can help guide the translatorthrough the process of store names translation and based on this, the translationstrategy “combination of transliteration and free translation” is strongly recommendedby the author to achieve the Skopos theory of translation to the largest extent.