Cultural Reflections On Functional Equivalence In The Version Of English Commodity Advertisements

Advertisement, being a mass medium of communication, plays a decisive part in domestic and international trade. As advertising is a manifestation of language in action, the translation of advertisement must be accurate and fluent. The author attempts to explain from the angle of cultural reflection with emphasis on cultural differences, how to do well in the practice of advertising translation and achieve the equivalent effect. This thesis is composed of six chapters.Chapter One intends to give a brief account of the reasons why the author plans to analyze the influence of the culture differences on advertisement translation.Chapter Two mainly deals with the definition of advertising and its economic effects and its objectives.Chapter Three is a general idea of culture and the relationship between culture and language and cross-cultural transfer in advertising translation..In Chapter Four, the author conducts a comprehensive study of the theory of the functional equivalence.Chapter Five is concerned with how translation failures occur in advertising translation. And it explores how to apply cross-cultural transfer to advertising translation. To attain the equivalent effect in advertising translation, and consequently achieve the purpose of communicating and persuading in cross-cultural advertising, the copywriters and translators are supposed to respect the language of the target consumers and the culture it reflects. The translator should identify the intended meaning of the source text and choose appropriate forms of language to convey it in the target text.Through a detailed analysis, this part of the thesis intends to arouse due attention to cultural differences between the source and target consumers in the process of rendering, for it is mainly these differences that have caused failures in advertising translation.The last chapter is the conclusion offering some recommendations for advertising translators.In the writing of this thesis, the author has made an intensive study of the books and magazines available which are pertinent to the topic. In the preparation of this thesis, the author carried out a research into the existing literature on the subject. And numerous examples, either from TV, radio, newspapers or magazines, have been cited in order to support the author's points of view. What needs to be pointed out is that for technical reasons, not all the sources have been given.