The Adaptation Theory Applied In Chinese And English Translated Brand Names Of Our National Products

With the accelerated pace of economic globalization, as part of advertising activity brand name translation becomes an important part in branding and marketing in international market. It is a very practical translation practice with high commercial value. As a kind of language use, brand name translation is a complex and dynamic process, involving not only linguistic factors but also social factors like products, target consumers, and cultural and social factors of the target market.As a practical theory with strong explanatory power, Verschueren's (1999) Adaptation Theory probes more into language use and offers us a perspective frame of research. He proposes that language use shall consist of the continuous making of linguistic choices of the language, which has three critical concepts: variability, negotiability and adaptability. Under the framework of Adaptation Theory, an exploratory study is made in this paper on the translation of national brand names into target languages including translating Chinese into English and foreign languages into Chinese, so as to discuss whether Adaptation Theory can be used as an effective strategy for national brand name translation, and then to find out how various adaptation strategies are applied in national brand name translation.In this study, firstly a qualitative analysis of 159 collected national brand names is made from four perspectives, which are adaptation to the linguistic features of target languages, adaptation to the characteristics of products, adaptation to the consumers, and adaptation to the society of the target market. It is found that among 159 brand names, the translations of 152 brand names are typically adaptive to linguistic context as well as the communicative context. For further discussion, a tentative quantitative study on the translations of these 152 brand names is made via statistics, summarizing the tendency of adaptation for different types of products. It is found that due to the differences in the natures of products, target consumers and target markets for different products, various adaptation strategies are adopted in the translation corresponding to different types of products. In addition, the further adaptation study and statistics of the translation of each brand name indicate that the translation of every brand name needs the consideration of adaptation to at least one factor or even more, which can be considered as an evidence that the translation of brand name is a dynamic process requiring various adaptations at different levels.Finally, it points out that Adaptation Theory is widely applied as guidance in the translation of national brand names. For different types of products, their brand name translations tend to apply different adaptation strategies, in which various factors are taken into account for a dynamic adaptation. In national brand name translations, Adaptation Theory is well adopted in order to achieve the commercial value and enormous functions of the brand names in marketing and promoting in the target market.