Equivalence In Advertising Translation

As a kind of practical text type with high business value, an advertisement must contain persuasive power and "memory value". With the increase of international exchanges, advertising translation has become very important. However, the work that has been done on translating advertising copy is quite limited compared to that of other areas in translation studies. Many current researches on it are focused on specific advertising translation methods in dealing with specific issues like rhetoric and slang and so forth. With an approach that is rather analytical than descriptive, the author tentatively tries to discuss on a theoretical base about equivalence at various levels in advertising translation, and hopefully to increase translators' understanding of the advertising genre. In this paper, the author argues that the functional equivalence based on equivalent effect is the fundamental criterion for advertising translation, while some translated advertisements may reach more levels of equivalence, such as equivalence at semantic level and equivalence at stylistic level and so forth.The structure of this paper goes as following:In Introduction, the author explains the reason why advertising translation is chosen as the topic, current researches on it and the literature and approaches employed in this paper.Chapter one starts with a brief introduction to functions of advertising, among which the most important one is to attract the consumer to purchase a particular product or form favorable ideas of certain products or services. This chapter focuses on the constraints of advertising translation, namely, constraints of marketing strategies, constraints of advertising law, constraints of advertising language andconstraints of culture elements. A concise discussion is also given to the issue of translatability in terms of advertising translation.Chapter two is the key part of the whole paper, in which the author concludes, after briefly examining the background of equivalence theory, that the functional equivalence based on equivalent effect of the original advertisements and the translated advertisements is the fundamental level of equivalence in advertising translation. Examples of famous cases in advertising translation are employed to show how equivalence theory pushes the limits of those constraints.Chapter three states that some advertisements may reach more levels of equivalence on the basis of the fulfillment of functional equivalence, though it is not necessarily the case in advertising translation that more levels of equivalence are reached the better. Some translated advertisements are proved by the market to be very successful, though they only achieve functional equivalence.The conclusion restates the significance of equivalence theory in advertising translation. It is a practical way to admit that equivalence in advertising translation has various levels and functional equivalence is the fundamental level.