An Analysis Of Brand Name Translation From The Perspective Of Language Attitudes

The research is an empirical analysis of brand name translation from the perspective of language attitudes to investigate whether people's attitudes towards brand names are influenced by the language of the brand names, and whether the influence of the language should be taken into consideration in brand name translation.With the approach of globalization, importing and exporting in China are increasing steadily. More and more manufacturers, especially those in our country, have to confront the problem of how to internationalize the brand names of their products successfully. Since China's entry into the World Trade Organization, Chinese enterprises are increasingly involved in the fierce competitions with foreign companies. Most foreign enterprises have their brands of international prestige, whereas Chinese ones often find themselves less competitive due to lacking influential brands for their products. Before promoting the products to the world market, a company has a primary task to internationalize its brand name and improve its brand names'attractiveness. Among other things, brand name translation is crucial in the publicity of brand names. However, up till now many of the Chinese brand name translations have been far from satisfactory.Brand name translation is special in that it is an inter-disciplinary activity involving the knowledge of economics, marketing, and linguistics. Owing to globalization, Anglicization in brand names is becoming increasingly prominent. That makes the author of the thesis think that language itself may influence people's attitudes towards brand names. The aim of the thesis is to study brand name translation from the consumers'language attitudes by investigating the consumers'cognitive, affective and behavioral attitudes towards Chinese and English brand names so as to find out whether the language will influence consumers' attitudes towards the brand names. It is expected to provide a better understanding of the principles of domestication and foreignation for brand name translation.By means of questionnaires and data analysis, the author finds that consumers'attitudes towards brand names are influenced by the language of the brand names: an English brand name of the high-tech product can obtain high cognitive attitudes but low affective attitudes of Chinese consumers; a Chinese brand name of the low-tech product can obtain both high cognitive and high affective attitudes from Chinese consumers; a bilingual brand name can obtain high behavioral attitudes from them as well. The findings indicate that the language is an influential factor in brand name translation: in the translation of the brand name of a high-tech product from the language of higher prestige into that of lower prestige, a foreignized translation is recommended, while a domesticated translation is preferable in the opposite case. A domesticated translation is always given priority in translating the brand name of a low-tech product from the source language into the target language.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction to the thesis, including the background of the research, as well as the rationale and the significance of the research. Chapter Two is the literature review of the language attitudes theory and brand name translation, the former being the introduction to the concepts of language attitudes theories and researches about attitudes towards English and Chinese, while the latter including the respective researches abroad and in China as well as various principles and methods for brand name translation. Chapter Three is a thorough explanation of the experiment design including the research questions, subjects, instruments and detailed procedures of the experiment. Chapter Four is the results and the discussion of the research, including data analysis and discussion of the influences of the language on consumers'attitudes towards high-tech and low-tech brand names, and the relationships among consumers'cognitive, affective and behavioral attitudes towards them. Chapter Five is the conclusion of this thesis with the summary of the findings of the research included. Implications, limitations and recommendations of the thesis are put forward in this chapter.