Functional Equivalence: The Principle Feasible In E-C Poetic Advertisement Translation

Advertisement is an important part of our economy and culture that exerts significant impact on all walks of life. Poetic advertisements have taken an enormous economic importance in the business world. Poetry as an elegant and high-class art form combining with advertisement creates unique beauties of sound, "imagery" and beauties by rhetorical devices. Poetic advertisement provides new material for the study of language and translation.Advertising translation is not traditional translation any more. It should make original and target languages reach the equivalence from semantic, social and cultural aspects. Advertising should be translated according to the four kinds of functional characters of advertising: Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. The commercial purpose of promoting sales is achieved by stimulating the purchasing desire of consumers.Chapter One starts with a brief introduction to the stylistic features of English poetic advertisement and its constraints in translation. The main function of advertisement is to attract the consumer to purchase a particular product or form favorable ideas of certain products or services. This chapter analyses the constraints of poetic advertisement translation, namely, constraints of marketing strategies, constraints of advertising law, constraints of advertising language and constraints of culture elements.Chapter Two briefly introduces the classification of language functions, the functions of advertising language and the background and contents of functional equivalence in translation. This chapter plays emphasis on the highlight of "functional equivalence", that is, "content over form" and "readers' response". Nida thinks that "functional equivalence" is the "the closest natural equivalence" (Nida, 2001:91). To preserve the content of the massage the form must be changed and he emphasizes "the extent to which the forms must be changed in order to preserve the meaning will depend upon the linguistic and cultural distance between languages" (Nida&Taber, 2004: 5); "The original receptors understood and appreciated the text and the way in which receptors of the translated text understand and appreciated the translated text" (Nida, 2004:86). With the dynamic relationship, the relationship between the receptor and the massage should be substantially the same as that which existed between the original receptors and the message. Nida thinks that "the total meaning or content of a discourse, the conceptions or feelings in which the author intends the reader to understand and receive (Nida& Taber, 2004:205)".Chapter Three states out that the theory "functional equivalence" is quite feasible for representing the poetic beauty, feasible for information conveyance, feasible for readers' acceptability, feasible for realizing advertisements' functions. As is shown in the above study, the theory "functional equivalence" can be used as guiding principle in the translation of English poetic advertisement.