Pragmatic Failure In English Translations Of Chinese Advertisements

Advertising is something that we are all exposed to and it is likely to affect most of us in different spheres of our life. Owing to its special functions, advertising language has its unique characteristics. In turn, advertising language has become the research target for many linguists. So far a lot of scholars, such as Leech, Lakoff and Geis, have studied advertising language from the perspectives of stylistics and pragmatics. But few books and articles are published to analyze the English translations of Chinese advertisements. However, with the policy of reform and opening to the outside world, we have been exporting our products to foreign countries. In this process English translations of Chinese advertisements play an important role in promoting the sales of commodities abroad. Disappointedly, too many mistakes and confusions, even misunderstandings have arisen from the current English translations of Chinese advertisements in foreigners' eyes, which actually cannot achieve the expected effects as to arouse the foreigners' interests. That is why the analysis of English translations of Chinese advertisements should be given great emphasis.From the angle of pragmatics and cross-cultural communication, this thesis focuses on the analysis of hybrid language, namely the English translations of Chinese advertisements, with the aim of revealing the pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure in the translations. Such an analysis is of great pragmatic significance. Because of the different cultural backgrounds, cognitive environments and values, the same advertisement may have different, even opposite understandings in different countries. Therefore, the strict translation without any consideration of the above differences may conflict with the customs and beliefs of the target consumers, consequently causing the sales frustration of the product in the international market. In this sense the proper English translations of Chinese advertisements require not only the accurate translation but also the modification of cultural-specific advertising materials.With the help of Jenny Thomas' theory of pragmatic failure, the thesis will apply the research method of qualitative analysis. Most of the advertisements discussed in this thesis are print advertisements chosen from newspapers and magazines published in the past four years in China, which have no grammatical mistakes, but do not accord with the English habitual expression of advertising discourse. By asking for the advice from westerners and comparing English translations of Chineseadvertisements and the native English advertisements from the perspectives of syntax and lexicon, this thesis will try to locate different pragmatic failures in English translations of Chinese advertisements. Based on prototype theory and the theory of language transfer, the present study is undertaken by exploring the reasons for cross-cultural pragmatic failure, revealing that the sources of failure are traced back to the transferences of pramalinguistic and sociopragmatic rules of mother tongue to the target language. The analysis should help to illustrate how the theoretical insights of pragmatics could inform the practice of advertisements translation.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is devoted to Thomas' theory of pragmatic failure and his classification of pragmatic failure; Chapter Two gives a deep discussion of the reasons leading to pragmatic failure and the focus is on the cognitive approach and transfer theory; the analysis of English translations of Chinese advertisements will proceed in Chapter three, four and five, with a view of shedding some light on the sources of cross-cultural pragmatic failure, that is the transference of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic rules of mother tongue to the target language. Finally in the conclusion, the key points of the thesis will be reviewed, and the significance and the limitations will be given.It goes without saying that such a research is of practical significance to the people engaged...