Strategies For Translating Auto Advertising From The Functionalist Perspective

China is now second only to the US in selling automobiles with a total number of 8,791,500 in 2007. Therefore, making a study on the translation of auto advertising, in the background of globalization, is of great significance in China. However, auto industry in China remains a very young manufacturing, and the study on its translation in China is still in the initial stage, and few researchers give particular study on this field. This paper tries to discuss the strategies for translating auto advertising.Advertising is a kind of practical writing with a definite commercial purpose. Translation theories, therefore, must be closely combined with the special purpose of advertising if we try to find the translation strategies for translating advertisement. German functionalist theory, which takes"Skopos (purpose)"as the predominant principle to guide translation, has opened up a new perspective to the study of advertising translation. It highlights the functionality of the target text in the target culture, and translation strategies and methods must be determined by the intended purpose and the function of the target text. This theory provides a theoretical basis for some unconventional translation strategies like abridgement, addition etc., which are frequently used in ad translation. The author thus regards the functionalist approaches as the most suitable guiding principle for auto advertising translation.This thesis briefly introduces the functionalist approaches to translation, and analyzes the linguistic features of auto advertising and compares English auto advertising with Chinese ones, on the basis of which the author believes that traditional equivalence-based translation theories are not suitable for directing auto advertising translation. It also collects the common mistakes made in translating auto advertising, and focuses on the strategies for translating auto advertising from the functionalist perspective.