Functionalist Approach To The Translation Of Cosmetic Advertisement

As globalization is developing fast, advertisements have become an important part of international business. Thus advertisement translation is gaining more and more attention from scholars and translators. Although researches on advertisement translation theories and practices have gained enough attention, researches focusing on cosmetic advertisement translation are far from sufficient.Functional equivalence and dynamic equivalence had dominated pragmatic translation for a long time. Nevertheless, in translation practice translators and theorists gradually realize that equivalence theories cannot solve problems in reality. Therefore, a translation theory that can be applied to advertisement translation and other pragmatic translation is in need. At that time, functionalist theories come up. Among kinds of functionalist theories, Skopostheorie is considered as the most appropriate for advertisement translation. The purpose of advertisements is promoting sales and persuading consumers into buying goods or services. Thus Skopostheorie can be considered as a guideline for advertisement translation.There are distinctive differences between Chinese and English cultures as well as between these two languages. How to deal with these differences is the foremost requirement in advertisement translation process. Under the guideline of Skopostheorie, according to target-culture and target-language oriented strategies, translators have the freedom to make the target text appealing, acceptable and correct.