On The Application Of Functionalist Approaches To C-E Translation In The Fashion Industry

This thesis looks into the feasibility and application of functionalist approaches, especially translation variation, in the new angle of fashion texts translation. Fashion, as an important component of culture and creativity industry, reflects different costume, artistic and aesthetic values in different regions and countries. Owing to the strong links between fashion and culture, and a far cry from Chinese and Western values, the Chinese-English translation of texts in the fashion industry is worth of consideration and study.Fashion catalogues and trend books are the focus of this thesis. As a sub-category of publicity materials, they carry the basic informative function but have their own distinct characteristics. In the light of functionalist approaches to translation, the thesis classifies the text focus—a dominating expressive function with visual images and potential appellative function, and linguistic features with large amount of rhetoric language and strong professionalism. Due to the disparity in art, aesthetic, belief, language habits and other values between Chinese and Western culture and a lag behind international practice, problems emerge in translating socio-cultural specific images and terminology and in representing the language style. In order to achieve the communicative effect, there is a call for translators to escape from language fetters and employ adaptive translation methods.Based on Christiane Nord's translation-oriented text analysis, this thesis advocates to have a throughout understanding of the source texts, and the translation commission and detailed analysis of verbal and non-verbal elements. Through a case study, this thesis proves the advantages of translation variation, namely extraction, paraphrasing, deletion, rewriting and so on, in tackling with constrains of socio-cultural differences, language habits and professional jargons. In the hope of providing a reference for C-E translation of fashion texts, the thesis draws a conclusion that the real communicative effect should be the first concern of translation and translators should be more adaptive in dealing with the specific text type and try to retain both the form and content of the specific cultural images.