Functional Equivalence And Advertisement Translation

Advertising is taking on greater and greater importance in modern times as a result of the ever-growing economic globalization. So is advertisement translation. However, this kind of translation work is rather difficult in that it is extremely flexible and complex owing to the uniqueness of advertisement and the differences between the Chinese and English languages as well as between their cultural backgrounds.As we all know, advisements are always characterized by their definite purposes and functions. In terms of their translation, it is more important to explore how the linguistic and cultural elements have served the advertising purpose than to simply focus on the transfer of these elements. Only in this way can we choose appropriate methods to help the target text realize the purpose of the source text. Therefore, in this thesis Eugene Nida's functional equivalence theory is referred to as the theoretical foundation. Based on that, the thesis mainly discusses how to deal with the cultural and linguistic differences between Chinese and English in such a way as to carry out the functions of the original texts, and further analyzes, through examples, some frequently employed techniques in advertisement translation.Based on the above analysis, the thesis concludes that functional equivalence is the primary concern of advertisement translation, and at times cultural and linguistic adaptation is both inevitable and necessary in this type of translation in the attainment of the intended goal of the source text.