On TL-Oriented Strategies In Advertisement Translation

In modern society, advertisements are pervasive, and have become a "compulsory course" of modern people. With the deepening of reform and opening up and the development of China's economy and the entry of WTO, international trade is becoming more and more frequent, with the coming of buyer's market era, the competition between different products in international market is also getting fiercer. Advertising, as an effective competition method, plays a more and more evident role in promoting the sales and taking up the new market. And the importance of advertisement translation also comes out.As a kind of practical style with high business value, the final purpose and main function of advertisement is to persuade customers to accept and purchase the publicized merchandise and service. The advertisement is undoubtedly regarded as unsuccessful if it couldn't achieve such purpose. From the perspective of advertisement translation, the translation text, which does not achieve such purpose and function, cannot be regarded as successful. Nowadays, China's advertisement translation still remains less fully developed, and the traditional translation strategies guided by equivalence translation theory is not satisfying, for firstly English and Chinese belong to completely different language systems and it is difficult to achieve absolute equivalence in translation process; secondly, advertisement is a kind of purposeful propagandistic style, if we try to seek formal equivalence blindly in advertisement translation, the realization of its communicative function will be harmed. Next, the big gap between cultural backgrounds is another barrier in achieving the translation equivalence.This thesis discusses the advertisement translation strategy guided by the German functionalist theory, which emphasizes the functions of translation and its target text in their own culture and holds that translation is a kind of action with purpose, and that translation activity tries to keep the relationship between the target text and the source text to overcome the cultural barriers. Therefore, the translators should be target-text-oriented and fully consider the language custom and cultural background so that the purpose and function of the advertisement and the expecting effect can be achieved.This thesis can be divided into five parts; first, the writer introduces the development background and main typical achievements, from the perspective of functionalist theory, some of the advertisement translation texts have their dependency in target cultures, therefore the translators should be target-reader-oriented and active creative factors in translation process. Then the writer points out that advertisement translation should be a target-language-oriented and creative translation activity by careful analysis of the characteristic, purpose, function and the main elements that affect advertisement translation. In order to achieve such a purpose, Based on my personal research, I have designed a mix of strategies that can best suit ad translation to achieve the most desirable results .The writer thinks that the translation strategies, such as adaptation, abridgement and amplification which are not in conformity to traditional translation theory are practical and applicable strategies which could be adopted in advertisement translation. Functionalism theory has provided a solid theory foundation for them and opens up a new perspective of advertisement translation. Finally, the writer forwards another translation strategy applicable in advertisement translation, dynamic equivalence theory.This thesis discusses the German functionalist theory and target-language-oriented advertisement translation strategy, hopefully to arouse attention to advertisement translation to better serve China's economy development.