Advertisement Translation In The Perspective Of Memetics

Memetics is a scientific study concerned with cultural evolution. It holds the view that culture transmits from person to person by imitating. The theory makes it possible to study the abstract culture by reducing the cultural information into manageable elements and labeling them. The core concept of the theory, meme, which is coined from"gene", refers to all kinds of replications of information. The theory provides us a new perspective of study. Advertisement is chosen as the object of this research, since advertisement translation plays a more and more important role and appeals for further guiding strategies with the development of economic globalization. This thesis therefore studies the advertisement translation from the perspective of memetics.Advertising language, as a kind of language for special purposes, has its own features, which determines that the replication of advertisement meme is different from that of other varieties of language in the process of translation. Based on the previous analysis, a tentative model of advertisement translation is proposed in the thesis. Advertisement memes go through four phases in order to be successfully transmitted into the target language --- assimilation, decoding, pseudo-infection, and encoding. Failure in any phase will lead to extinction of the meme. The translator, as a special host, plays significant roles in these phases, especially in encoding. By case study of all the adverting components, which are brand name, slogan, headline and body text, some strategies for encoding are suggested to create strong memes. Advertisement memes are encoded either directly in the same content and same form, or as genotype memes, or as phonotype memes. It is expected that the thesis could offer some advice for advertisement translation.