The Application Of Functionalist Approach To Advertising Translation Practice-from The Cultural Perspective

Advertising, something that we are all exposed to ,and also something that is likely to affect most of us in all spheres of our lives ; at the same time ,the rapid progress of economy, the development of international exchanges and severe competition bring about a growing need for advertisement and thus of its translation. As a branch of translation study, advertisement translation has its inherent laws and needs a systematic study.Advertisement is a very practical type of writing with high commercial value and the ultimate purpose of all advertisements is the same—to promote sales. Due to the differences of language and culture, a good advertisement, if not well translated, may not be successful to the target audience. If a translator rigidly adheres to the original form and style in an advertisement translation, the version may fail to produce its persuasive effect and may not achieve the success in promoting sales in the target market. Therefore, advertisement translation does not serve as a simple information transfer from a source language to a target language, but a transfer process with reference to the cultural and linguistic characteristics of the target language. Thus, the translational equivalence theory turns out to be increasingly inadequate and a more practical theory and translation strategy are called for.The German Functionalist approaches provide theory support. The theoryconsiders translation as a purposeful action based on the source text. Translators keep certain relations between target text and source text according to the purpose of translation to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers. On the other hand, the German functionalist approach emphasizes the functionality of the target text in the target culture, and translation strategies are determined by the purpose and the intended function of the target text. In this model, the source text serves as only "an offer of information" from which a translator selects the items he or she finds interesting and important to reach the intended goal. Under the functionalist theory, translators are provided a theoretical basis for some unconventional translation strategies such as abridgement, addition and adaptation.This thesis, in the framework of functionalist approaches, states the definition, structure, functions and characteristics of advertising and analyzes the cultural and linguistic differences between Chinese and English advertisements, at last, suggests some successful translation techniques applicable to advertising translation.