The Application Of Adaptation Theory To Advertisement Translation-From The Perspective Of Culture

As a language for specific purpose, advertisement has its special functions and linguistic features which lead to that advertisement translation should not only keep to the general principles of translation but also have its own rules, criteria and approaches so that it can achieve the ultimate commercial purpose of advertisement.Moreover, abundant cultural elements are included in advertisements. Therefore, advertisement translation involves not only the language itself but also cultural differences between the source language and the target language. This thesis analyzes five major cultural differences between Chinese and English advertisements.Verschueren's adaptation theory can explain many translational phenomena. This theory holds that language use must consist of the continuous making of linguistic choices and the reason why people can make continuous linguistic choices when using language is that language has three properties: variability, negotiability and adaptability. When a linguistic phenomenon is approached pragmatically, four angles should be investigated: contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, the dynamics of adaptability and the salience of adaptation process. This thesis holds that translation is also a process of continuous making of linguistic choices. It is a process of making adaptation of source language with regard to context and linguistic structure in a dynamic way.Based on Verschueren's adaptation theory and its implications on translation, this thesis explores the various contextual correlates which influence advertisement translation from the perspective of cultural differences. Through the comparison of cultural differences existing in the source and target languages, the thesis proposes that in order to achieve a proper advertisement translation, translators should make their adaptation to the contextual correlates including the consumer's mental world, the consumer's social world, the physical world and the linguistic world of the target language.