顺应论与英汉广告语翻译

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Chapter ⅠIntroduction

1.1 The Significance of the Research

Nowadays, with the rapid development of the economy, many foreign products are

coming into Chinese markets; meanwhile, our domestic products are also facing a fierce

competition into the foreign markets. So how to make the products competitive and

attractive among the other products is of great significance for the businessmen. Except

for their excellent product quality, the publicity of the products is becoming more and

more important for many companies.

Advertisement, as one of the most effective means of publicizing the products, has

its higher commercial value. A well-translated advertisement can help set up a good

brand image among the consumers and finally promote the product sales. So the

advertisement translation, to a great extent, influences the producers’ sales volume.

However, nowadays poor advertisement translations are quite common, because of the

translator’s negligence of the cultural, social, physical and mental world differences

between English and Chinese. These improper advertisement translations have very bad

effect on the images of the products and destroy the good reputation of the enterprise as

well. So it is quite necessary for the producers to attach great importance to the

advertisement translation.

In recent years, many scholars have studied advertisement translations from

different perspectives, for instance, Nida’s the Equivalence Translation Theory, Skopos’

Action Theory and Sperber-Wilson’s the Relevance Theory and the like. But there is no

coherent and comprehensive perspective put forward to the advertisement translation.

Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory also provides a comprehensive and scientific

angle for pragmatics studies. Unlike other pragmatists, he neither sees pragmatics as a

branch of linguistics alongside with phonology, syntax, morphology and semantics, nor

sees it as parallel to the interdisciplinary fields as well, like the sociolinguistics,

psycholinguistics and so on. In his opinion, pragmatics is concerned about the full

complexity of linguistic behaviors. As a research approach to language use, his

Adaptation Theory tries to use a dynamic way to analyze discourse components. It is

indeed a pragmatic perspective on language use including the continuous making of

English and Chinese Advertisement Translation from the Perspective of Adaptation Theory

adaptive linguistic choices at various levels of salience so as to meet the communicative

needs. Adaptation Theory studies pragmatics in a broader sense, involving the whole

range of social, cultural and cognitive aspects in constructing meanings through the

whole language use. Therefore it can provide a new and systematic perspective for

advertisement translation.

This thesis makes a tentative study of the English and Chinese advertisements

translation from the perspective of Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory. It analyzes

advertisement components and the theoretical framework of Adaptation Theory as well

as the relationship between the adaptation and advertisement translation. The data used

in this paper are mainly the product advertisements in our daily life. Some data are

taken from the official website of the products; others are the printed commercial

advertisements in the products packaging from the supermarkets and the emporiums. To

some extent, this research is quite meaningful for advertisement translation.

1.2 Research Method

Jef Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory serves as the theoretical basis in this paper.

The contrastive and comparative research methods are applied in analyzing the

successful advertisement translations and some poor advertisement translations.

Finally, it uses a brief questionnaire to test the effectiveness of the research.

1.3 The Structure of the Thesis

There are five chapters in this thesis.

Chapter one is a general introduction of this paper, including the source of this

paper, the significance of this research, the research method and the structure of the

whole thesis.

Chapter two is an overview of the previous relevant studies and the current

researches. In this part, some scholars’ researches home and abroad have been

introduced. Besides it also makes an analysis of Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory.

Chapter three presents a brief introduction about advertisement, including its

definition, purpose, functions and components.

Chapter four is the core part of this thesis. It makes a detailed analysis Adaptation

Theory and provides some samples of advertisement translations, including both the

successful and unsuccessful ones. Through the analysis of these samples, some

translation implications are acquired from the successful advertisement translation

Chapter ⅠIntroduction

samples. For the unsuccessful ones, the author also tries to make modifications. A

questionnaire is designed mainly to test the effectiveness of the research. It includes two

parts: one part is to test whether some key factors relevant to Adaptation Theory in

advertisement translation are useful or not; the other part is mainly used to test the

effectiveness of revised version

Chapter five the conclusion summarizes the findings of this paper. It tries to sum

up several translation methods and proposes some useful suggestions for the further

advertisement translations study.

English and Chinese Advertisement Translation from the Perspective of Adaptation Theory

Chapter ⅡLiterature Review

Before our study, it’s quite necessary for us to make a full understanding of the

previous research on advertisement translation.

2.1 Researches in the Western Countries

In 1960s, the dominant linguistic theory of translation in western countries is the

equivalence-based linguistic approach which can be divided into two schools —the

textual equivalence and the dynamic equivalence.

The textual equivalence school was founded by Catford and then it was developed

by Newmark.

The dynamic equivalence school was founded by Eugene A. Nida. He made

distinguish between the formal equivalence and the dynamic equivalence in translation:

the formal equivalence focuses on a faithful reproduction of source-text and the

dynamic equivalence concerns about the equivalence of extra-linguistic communicative

effect (Nida, 1964). The equivalence theory has been used in advertisement translation

ever since it was introduced to translation; especially Nida’s dynamic equivalence

theory gives many inspirations that the literal translation theory can’t achieve.

In 1970s, functional approach to translation appeared in Germany. There are two

main representatives Hans J. Vermeer’s Skopostheorie and its extensions; and Justa

Holz-Manttari’s theory of translational action. According to the functional approach,

translation type is not determined by the source text but by the purpose of translation

process—any translation process is determined by the overall translational action (Nord,

1997, p.37). The promotion purpose decides that advertisement translation is quite

different from other types of translation. In advertisement translation, the source text

serves only as an information offer from which the translators choose some interesting

and important information to satisfy the intended readers. Functional approach provides

the translators much more room for creating the target text; therefore nowadays it is

very popular among the advertisement translations. But due to its high purpose and

strong creativity, the translator may sometimes neglect some original rhetorical and

stylistic features in the original advertisement.

Guy Cook (1992) has made great contribution to advertisement development,

Chapter ⅡLiterature Review

especially in terms of context classification. But there are still some limitations about

his opinions, which mainly focus on the semantic aspects. Besides, he thinks that

communication can be achieved first by the speakers who encode the information and

then by the listeners or readers who decode it. But Cook ignores the role of the

interpreter, nor takes the reader or the hearer’s emotions and feelings into consideration.

Cord Christina studies advertisement translation strategies through analyzing some

reception factors, for instance, the target audience, new products, target culture habits

and phonetic factors and so on.

In 2004, the translator proposes a special issue about the advertisement materials,

which stimulates contributors much more observations from different angles.

2.2 Researches in China

In China, there is a long history about translation and also a large number of

translation theories. The most influential and long lasting one may be Yan Fu’s

three-word criterion “faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance”. In addition, there are

some other scholars such as Lin Yutang’s translation criteria “faithfulness, coherence

and beauty” and Qu Qiubai’s “faithfulness and accuracy”. They are all the

representatives of the literal translation school, which pays much more attention to the

faithfulness to the source text.

Due to the special purpose of advertisement, especially its persuasive function,

only these criteria can’t meet the need of advertisement translation development. The

translator should consider more factors related to the target audiences—the consumers.

Therefore, during the translating process, the advertisement translators should not only

consider the accuracy and faithfulness of the translation, but try their best to make the

advertisement translations attractive and interesting. A successful advertisement

translation can easily attract the audiences’ attention, and stimulate their buying desire

and at last persuade them to take action to buy.

In 1980s, some scholars had done a lot of research on advertisement translations.

Such as: Fan Yanbo (1987) discusses some problems existing in the brand name

translation from Chinese to English. Liu Xinlin (1990) discusses the problems existing

in commercial advertisement translations and proposes some solving methods. At the

same year, Li Xiangde discusses how to translate the four-character brand name from

Chinese to English.

In 1990s, some scholars and translators had begun to study the translation

English and Chinese Advertisement Translation from the Perspective of Adaptation Theory

procedures and some advertisement translation principles. The studies mainly focus on

the advertisement language, the psychology of the consumers. Jiang Lei (1994) studies

the equivalence between English and Chinese commercial advertisement translation and

does some research on the translation procedure.

Nowadays, the advertisement translation research has had a big development.

There appear some new research views. For instance, Zheng Qiufang (2003) makes a

detailed analysis of advertisement translation on the basis of Skopos theory. Tan

Weiguo’s the Rhetoric Translation in English and Chinese Advertisement studies

advertisement translation based on some rhetorical features. Zeng Wenxiong proposes

some new views on advertisement translation in his new book, the Pragmatic

Approaches of Translation Studies. Guo Guilong (2008) analyzes the features of

advertisement and some advertisement translation strategies in his new book English

Advertisements: Style and Translation.

The precious studies have made great contributions, but there are still some

limitations left. Those researches mainly focus on the surface level, while the

extra-linguistic aspects, like context, culture, cognition or aesthetics are not fully

explored. Some researches on advertisement translation are based on Eugen Nida’s

equivalence translation theory and some others are on the basis of Sperber and Wilson’s

Relevance Theory or Skopos’ Action Theory. Most of the researches, however, only

explore certain aspects of translation. No complete and systematic pragmatic

perspective is offered to advertisement translation studies. Therefore these theories on

advertisement translations are far more than satisfying. In 1999, Verscheueren put

forward his Adaptation Theory which is a new and broad perspective for advertisement

translation.

2.3 Theoretical Background—Adaptation Theory

Adaptation Theory, or in its full name, pragmatics as a Theory of Linguistic

Adaptation, was first proposed by Jef Verschueren, the general secretary of the

International Pragmatics Association in the 1980s.

Through years of modification and enrichments, Verschueren finally put forward

his new view on pragmatics —Adaptation Theory, in his new book Understanding

Pragmatics in 1999. Adaptation Theory, as a new approach to language study, provides

a new, comprehensive and scientific perspective for pragmatics research. It takes into

account the cognitive, social and cultural aspects of the linguistic phenomena. In order

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摘要：

ChapterⅠIntroduction1ChapterⅠIntroduction1.1TheSignificanceoftheResearchNowadays,withtherapiddevelopmentoftheeconomy,manyforeignproductsarecomingintoChinesemarkets;meanwhile,ourdomesticproductsarealsofacingafiercecompetitionintotheforeignmarkets.Sohowtomaketheproductscompetitiveandattractiveamongthe...

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