An Exploration Of Brand Words And Their Translation

Brand is the symbol of the goods and the guide for the consumers who want to know or purchase goods; with a certain linguistic form and rich cultural connotations, brand words are the signs identifying the goods in the written form. In the modern society, as an essential component of advertising, the brand words play a more and more important role. With China's successful entry into the WTO, our Chinese products have more opportunities to penetrate into world markets, and at the same time, more and more foreign products can enter Chinese market. So the competition for various products in the market is being more and more fierce. Therefore, people have come to realize the importance of good brand words and their appropriate translation in the process of promoting sales and developing the international market.It is acknowledged that a successful translation of brand words is a complex job that involves different kinds of disciplines, such as linguistics, translatology, marketing, psychology, aesthetics, cross-cultural communication and so on. Thus the translation of brand words is a cross-cultural activity, but never a mechanical translating activity that translates one language into another. In the process of brand word translation, it is necessary for us to study the differences in the language, the region, the culture, the mentality of consumption and the value of aesthetics. However, recently, our theoretical study of the translation of brand words is not thorough or systematic enough to meet the demands of the society. Translation strategies based on traditional translation theories can no longer satisfy the objective requirements of the translation of brand words. So it is not only necessary but also urgent for us to study the brand words and their translation. Therefore, in this thesis, on the basis of the summary and results of the former studies and in the light of modern linguistic and translating theory, the author, from the perspective of cross-cultural communication, analyzes the problems existing in the cultural differences of Chinese and English brand words, points out the essence of brand words' characteristics and social functions so as to help the translators to have an insight into the deep hierarchy of brand words' culture through the surface of the culture, and then probes into the meaning of Chinese and English brand words' translation and the best results of conveying information with the theory of communicative translation so that the abundant information contained in the brand words can be transmitted accurately and efficiently. This exploration is of certain theoretical significance as well as practical values in the commercial activity and language research.The thesis consists of five chapters. In Chapter One, the thesis begins with the introduction of the research problems and objectives, literature review, and design of my research. In Chapter Two, the author briefly introduces the basic knowledge of brand and brand words including their definitions, classification, functions and characteristics. In Chapter Three, the author compares and analyzes the cultural differences and connotations between Chinese and English brand words, then expresses the cultural impacts on Chinese and English brand words. Chapter Four is the keystone of the study. From the perspective of cross-cultural communication, the author puts forward the problems about the cultural differences between Chinese and English brand words and the shortcoming of traditional translation theories, deeply analyzes the hierarchy between culture and brand words' translation, and in accordance with Peter Newmark's communicative translation theory and the excellent examples of brand word's translations in China and foreign countries, discusses how to fluently translate brand words in an efficient way in order to accurately transmit the information and retain as much as possible the creative and cultural characteristics of brand words. Hence, applying communicative translation theory to brand words' translation will not only lay the foundation of the core of the theory for this thesis, but also reinforce the theoretic concept of brand words' translation and provide more concrete methods of translating brand words in practice. Chapter Five is the conclusion of the whole thesis.