Skopos Theory's Instructive Meaning On Advertisement Translation

Advertising language, as a kind of pragmatic text, has special features in vocabulary, syntax and rhetoric. Thus, the advertising language has long been the hotspot of study in the linguistic circle.With the continuous development of the economic globalization, especially after China's accession into the World Trade Organization, the demand for pragmatic translation is increasing fast. The past translation theories are put forward mainly for the purpose of instructing literary translation. In the circumstances, German functionalists devised the Skopos Theory, which held that the translator was entitled to make suitable adjustment in the light of the purpose and function of the source text. In terms of Skopos Theory, the translator does not render the source text literally but acts as the mediator between the source text author and target text readers. The core of Skopos Theory lies in the selection of different translation strategies in the light of different translation purposes and functions.First of all, This essay makes a systematic introduction to German Katharina Reiss's and Christiane Nord's Skopos Theory and its three principles: the Skopos Rule, the Fidelity Rule and the Coherence Rule, English Peter Newmark's category of text function, and seeks their useful elements to expound the nature and function of advertisement translation. Secondly, on the basis of differences between the Chinese and English advertisement in morphology, syntax, rhetoric and culture, the author explores the application of the general rules of Skopos Theory into advertisement translation with a large number of practical C/E translation samples.At last, the author covers the translation of corporate advertisement and brochure. The expression of English advertisement is objective and specific and it gives prominence to the function of "Information", while the expression of Chinese advertisement pays attention to touch person with words and lays particular stress on the function of "Appeal". Therefore, in the practical C/E advertisement translation, the translator should make sure the proper expression of the target text according to the function of the text and then he should abstractly sum up and extract the essential information proper for the target text from the exaggerated and largely rendered Chinese text. Taking account of cultural differences, specific communication situation, text conventions and the reading habit of the English reader, the translator should apply the proper and formal language and also stress the function of "information" of the target text. Due to the differences between the Chinese advertisement and the English advertisement, there is always revision and change to the function and linguistic form of the original Chinese text. In view of this, the disposal technique (The hetero functional instrumental translation) put forward by Nord is extremely useful in advertisement translation.