On Translation Of Automobile Brand Name Explained By Skopostheorie

The brand name, as an efficient instrument for the companies to advertise and promote their products, has specific symbolic meaning as well as profound indicative meanings and embraces unique commercial and cultural information. It is not only regarded as "the window dressing" of the products, but also the guide for the consumers to know or purchase products. In modern society, the brand name, as an essential component of advertising, plays a big role in business competition. The companies come to realize the importance of good brand names in the process of promoting products, stimulating consumption and developing new markets.With the trend of globalization of world economy and China's successful entry into WTO, more and more foreign products penetrate into China's market, which makes the competition for various products in the market much fiercer. Entering the 21st century, China's economic strength increases substantially and automobile industry becomes prosperous. Foreign automobiles, however, play the leading role in China's automobile market. Besides, with the development of global automobile industry, the automobile brand name, as a commercial concept, not only is a designation of goods, but also reflects business opportunity on its manufacturer with its abundant cultural implication. Therefore, it comes to the great significance of translation of the automobile brand names.Over the past decades, Chinese scholars have made extensive explorations in the field of brand and brand name translation from different perspectives. The translation theories of all these findings are almost based on Yanfu's "faithfulness", "expressiveness" and "elegance", Eugene Nida's "equivalence" or Peter Newmark's "semantic translation" which have many deficiencies: 1) Due to the big differences of language and culture, absolute equivalence can not be achieved, in theory or in practice; 2) Equivalent theory excludes non-traditional translation methods in translation research such as addition and adaptation, which are commonly adopted and very practical in brand name translation; 3) Some translated brand names under the guidance of equivalent theory may not be accepted by the target consumers, all of which can't help serve the purpose of brand name translation in commercial competition. As a break with the traditional translation ideas and an important complement to translation studies, the German functionalist theory, with Skopostheorie as its core, has opened up a new perspective for the study of brand name translation. This thesis attempts to construct a theoretical framework for the translation model by making Skoposthorie its basis.There are four important representatives of Skopostheorie: Katharina Reiss, Hans J.Vermeer, Justa Holz-Manttari, and Christiane Nord. 'Skopos' is a Greek word for 'purpose'. According to Skopostheorie, the prime principle determining any translation process is the purpose/Skopos of the overall translational action. Any form of translational action, including translation itself, may be conceived as an action which has a certain aim or Skopos. The word 'Skopos' is a technical term for the aim or purpose of a translation. Furthermore, an action leads to a result, a new situation or event, and possibly to a "new" object. The theory also holds that translation is a cross-cultural event, a purposeful activity; the translation purpose justifies the translation procedures, i.e., "the end justifies the means"; and the over frame of reference for the translator should not be the original and its function, as equivalence-based translation theory would have it, but the function or set of functions the target text is to achieve in the target culture. Therefore, when translating automobile brand names, the translator should feasibly choose different translation methods according to the target function and purpose.The author of this thesis holds that the ultimate goal of the automobile companies establishing brand names is to influence the sales of their products and persuade the consumers to make purchase. Based on this purpose, the author suggests that the translator should try to observe the corresponding translation brief, lay emphasis on the target addressee and take into consideration the intended functions of target texts, cultural diversity and consumer psychology when doing automobile brand name translation. Besides, different from literary translation, most of which is author-oriented, automobile brand name translation is primarily the target reader centered, i.e., consumer-oriented, here domestication strategy is adopted. Owing to great differences in language and culture, the translation process usually involves considerable adjustments or adaptations of the source text in order to achieve the intended functions of the target text. Thus the author proposes five translation methods for automobile brand name translation under the guidance of Skopostheorie, namely, transliteration, literal translation, combination of transliteration and literal translation, adaptation and transitional translation.