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Advertising Translation-From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

Posted on:2007-12-28Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:C FanFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360182477655Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
With the rapid development of Chinese economy and acceleration of the globalization process, advertising business is growing at an incredible speed, and China has also become one of the top ten advertising giants in the world today. Advertising translation, as a type of intercultural communication and a new field of study, is receiving more and more attention than ever before. However, to our disappointment, the theoretical study on this new field of translation is still far from satisfactory. Different schools hold different views on the guiding principle of advertising translation and some researches are only focused on specific advertising translation methods in dealing with specific issues like rhetoric and slang and so forth. In this thesis, the author holds the view that functional equivalence should be viewed as the principle of translating advertisements and functional equivalence in ad. translation should be achieved at two levels, namely, syntactic level and semantic level.Advertisement is a practical text style, quite different from common literary works, with a very material purpose of attracting consumers'interest and persuading them to take action after reading. Functional equivalence, raised by Eugene A. Nida, is defined as"in terms of the degree to which the receptors of the message in the receptor language respond to it in substantially the same manner as the receptors in the source language."(Nida 1969:24) No matter which language an ad. is transferred, the only purpose of drawing consumers'attention and stimulating them to purchase the product or service being advertised is never changed. From this point of view, functional equivalence could be viewed as the right principle of advertising translation.This paper consists mainly of six chapters. In the first chapter, a brief introduction to advertising is presented. Chapter Two deals with the features of advertising language from three aspects, namely, lexical features, syntactic features and rhetorical ones. In Chapter Three, the author firstly introduces the theory of functional equivalence and then the current strategies of advertising translation.Chapter Four and Chapter Five are the key parts in this paper. The author lists two reasons and cites many examples in Chapter Four to illustrate that functional equivalence should be viewed as the principle of advertising translation. In Chapter Five, the author further argues that functional equivalence could be achieved at two levels in advertising translation, namely, syntactic level and semantic level.
Keywords/Search Tags:advertising language, functional equivalence, advertising translation
PDF Full Text Request
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