Advertisement Translation: A Perspective Of Functional Theories Of Translation And Translational Norms

The intensification of international exchanges and the severe competition creates a growing need for advertising and thus for advertisement translation. Advertisement translation is getting more and more important, and its role in international marketing is indispensable. It is the ultimate purpose of all commercial advertisements to persuade the target audience into buying a product. Advertisement translation aims at achieving persuading the potential consumers in the target market into buying a product and promoting the sale of products. However, many advertisement translations that cannot perform the persuasive function in the Chinese market at present. But when the functional theories of translation are employed in advertisement translation, the situation is changing gradually. Functional theories of translation are relevant theories to advertisement translation study. It views the function of the target text in the target culture as the top-ranking rule of translation. The purpose of advertisement translation is to realize the persuasive function, so this purpose determines the translation procedures. For the functionalists a translator is an active factor in the translation process, when he aims at performing the persuasive function of the target text in the target context. So in the advertisement translation the translator has more power to select useful information and to decide the translation procedures. As a result, though some advertisement translations are different from the source texts in both form and content, they may become as persuasive as the source texts or even more persuasive than them. The application of functional theories in advertisement translation requires effective translation procedures such as addition, reduction, adaptation, free translation, literal translation and transliteration in order to make good advertisement translation that caters to the target audience and insures the fulfilling of the persuasive function of advertisement. Functional theories of translation explain the relationship between the purpose of advertisement translation and translation procedures. At the same time, these translation procedures are confined by the norms theory of the descriptive translation study. In essence, translational norms are the cultural elements which influence translation activity. The elements include the languages, textual traditions, the possibilities and limitations of the cognitive apparatus of the translator and other factors. According to the target-oriented research approach of the descriptive translation study, this thesis puts forward several advertisement translational norms like political and law norms, religion and moral norms, custom and cultural image norms, and value and national psychology norms through describing and analyzing the advertisement translation products and translation process in the target culture systemically. All these norms are cultural norms which belong to the initial norms and preliminary norms according to Toury's classification of norms. They are a set of useful and valid norms abstracted from the advertisement translation practice; and the set of norms can be employed widely in almost all advertisement translation and can direct the translator's translation behavior in advertisement translation effectively.