| With the globalization of economy, the competition among commercial products has intensified in the international market. Advertisement, as a means of promoting sales, plays an important role in prospering market economy. Accordingly, advertisement translation arouses great attentions among the translation society. As a special pragmatic style, advertisements have particular stylistic features and definite commercial objectives: to persuade consumers to take action of purchasing the advertised products or to accept their service. The translated advertisements should have the same effects as those of the original ones. Only when the target text conforms to the language and cultural habit of target consumers, can these advertisements inspire consumers'purchase desire and then make them take action of consumption. However, the translation of advertisement cannot proceed without the guidance of a proper theory. This thesis is an attempt of applying Relevance Theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson to the translation of advertisement. Relevance theory claims that communication is an ostensive-inferential process, and translation is a communicative action closely relevant to inference which should be based on relevance. Communicators always tend to find the optimal relevance between utterances and contexts, that is, to pay effective efforts and achieve enough effects when understanding an utterance. Advertisement, as a kind of communication, is also an ostensive-inferential process and advertisement translation is accordingly a double ostensive-inferential process in nature. Consequently, relevance plays significant roles in advertisement translation. The author attempts to analyze the process of advertisement translation from the basic concepts of relevance theory with the aim of motivating the practice of advertisement translation.This thesis comprises 6 parts. The first part briefly introduces the background information about advertisement and then moves to the writing motivation and structures of the thesis. The second part is first devoted to a general knowledge of the advertisement—definition, structure, categories, functions and features of the advertisement text. Then, some domestic famous studies on advertisement translation are reviewed from two aspects: translation principles, including adaptation principle, conciseness principle, equivalence principle, aesthetic principle and connotation principle; translation approaches proposed respectively by Li Xiangde, Jianglei and Yang Quanhong. The third part is the theoretic framework of the whole thesis. For the special literary style of advertisement, Chinese traditional translation theories and equivalence theory are not appropriate for advertisement translation any more. The most authoritative theories applied in advertisement translation in recent years are the functionalist theory and relevance theory. Functionalist approach to translation holds that translation type is determined not by the source text but by the purpose of the translation process. As a translation theory, it is really a great advance, but its weakness consists in that it cannot explain the process of advertisement translating. And functional equivalence is, however, difficult to achieve because differences of the socio-culture have to be taken into account. But all these can be solved by relevance theory. Thus, in this part, the basic concepts of relevance theory—ostensive-inferential nature, optimal relevance, context, cognitive environment are presented respectively. In the fourth part, the author first expounds the application of relevance theory to translation and then elaborates the explanatory power of relevance theory to advertisement translation from the following aspects: the aim of international advertisement translation; nature of advertisement translation; procedures of advertisement translation and the two key factors in advertisement translation—target addressees'cognitive environment and cultural relevance. The fifth part shows the relevance-theoretic enlightenments on English advertisement translation strategy. The author first formulates discrepancies between English and Chinese advertisements from the lexical and syntactical level, which can help to understand E-C advertisement translation. Then, a relevance-based analysis of E-C advertisement translation is presented. Under the guidance of relevance theory, translators can choose translation strategies flexibly, which is demonstrated by the detailed analysis of the 7 categories of E-C advertisements generalized by Li Kexing. Since the criterion of advertisement translation is to seek the optimal relevance between the translated advertisement text and target consumers, the relevance theory indeed provides the sound theoretical basis for these translation strategies. The last part draws a conclusion that although relevance theory is not a translation theory, it can guide the advertisement translation effectively. The research in this thesis is just a start, it is also hoped that this paper will serve its purpose of inspiring new comers in their efforts to further the studies in the near future. |
