A Memetic Study On Commercial Advertising Language Translation

Advertisement is playing a critical role in modern society and has become an indispensable part of our economic and cultural system. With both the commercial effect and the cultural propagation effect, commercial advertisement is always a research hotspot in the field of translation studies. The research on advertisement translation has achieved great improvement under the guidance of some traditional theories such as equivalence theory, skopos theory, aesthetic reception theory and relative theory. However, due to the inherent complexity of advertisement translation, the previous studies show a lack of systematization and operability.As an emerging discipline of sociobiology, memetics introduces neo-Darwinism to interpret the rules of cultural evolution and transmission. Its core concept "meme"—a unit of information and culture—realizes its transmission from one host to another through imitation and replication in human brains. In the view of memetics, advertisement translation is a process during which the advertisement memes replicate and transmit themselves among different cultures via the medium of language. Therefore, based on the natural connection between the contagious meme and the advertising communication, the author tries to apply memetic theories into the study on the strategies and process of commercial advertisement translation.In this thesis, the author mainly employs the interdisciplinary research method and case study method to fulfill three tasks including:1) to explore the inner-relationship between advertising language and meme;2) to probe into the advertisement translation strategies to create strong ad memes;3) to explain the advertisement translation process with memetic theories. In order to fulfill these tasks, first, the author re-understands advertising language in the view of memes according to their co-evolution interaction. Second, aiming to create strong ad memes, the author puts forward genotypic and phenotypic translation strategies according to the transmission modes of strong memes; on the other hand, another three strategies are suggested according to the major features of strong memes, namely adaption, motivation and re-creation strategy. What’s more, specific translation methods under each translation strategy are also explored, such as replication, analogy, imitation and attachment. Finally, the author establishes a tentative memetic model for the advertisement translation process based on the theories of meme replication lifecycle, and verifies this model’s explanatory power to the advertisement translation process through case study.Moreover, the author also explores the quality assessment method of advertisement translation. By combining the early theoretical assessment (qualitative analysis) with the later practical effect assessment (quantitative analysis), a comprehensive advertisement translation quality assessment method is put forward. In this way, the author has completed a relatively systematic and integrated study on advertisement translation from the perspective of memetics.In short, memetics has been proved to have a significant guiding function in the practice of advertisement translation. In this thesis the author tries to make an interdisciplinary research on the strategy, process and quality assessment of advertisement translation in a memetic approach, hoping to provide a beneficial reference for advertisement translators in their future translation practice.