Approach Of Functional Equivalence Theory To E-C And C-E Advertising Translation

With the economic globalization and the social and economic development of China, a large number of foreign products have emerged in China's market while numerous Chinese products have been exported to the international markets. Companies at home and abroad not only develop the domestic market but also make their great efforts to develop international markets. As a kind of intercultural communication and international business communication, the advertising has become an indispensable part of people's daily life and made our life more and more convenient. And advertisement translation gradually attracts the translator's attention and appears as a field of study. These phenomena have made companies at home and abroad pay much attention to the importance of advertising and advertisement translation. Under this condition, this study on translation of E-C and C-E advertisement inevitably has a realistic and guiding significance in helping translators improve the quality of E-C advertising translation, making products made in China go to the international markets and quickening the economic development of China.The thesis aims at exploring the field of advertisement translation between English and Chinese. After reviewing the previous studies on E-C advertising translation at home and abroad, it is found out that previous researches, which deals with E-C and C-E advertising translation from the perspective of Nida's functional equivalence theory, pays little attention to the semantic and pragmatic equivalence in the process of E-C and C-E advertising translation and that some researchers neglect the study on semantic and pragmatic equivalence of E-C and C-E advertising translation, focusing only cultural equivalence. Therefore, under the guidance of Nida's functional equivalence theory, on one hand, in this thesis the author strives to analyze some examples of English and Chinese advertisement translation, which appear in the research papers and public places, to illustrate how to make good use of functional equivalence theory in the E-C and C-E advertising translation practice to solve problems existing in E-C advertising translation; and on the other hand, through the qualitative research method, the author conducts study on the semantic, pragmatic and cultural equivalence of E-C advertising translation from two aspects of E-C and C-E advertising based on analyzing some examples of E-C and C-E advertising translated version: language and culture.A nation's language is a carrier and a part of its culture. Because the E-C advertising language has their own features: lexical feature, syntactic feature and rhetoric feature, according to their language features, the author analyzes some examples of E-C and C-E translated advertisements and finds out the some of them are unsuccessful, which is caused by a fact that translators neglect some features of English-Chinese advertising language and culture. As we know, in western and eastern cultures the different implications of words, the cultural default in advertising translation and the difference in the culture of English-Chinese advertisement are also the factors which add the difficulty to E-C and C-E advertising translation. Given that the E-C advertising is possessed with their own lexical feature, syntactic structures and rhetoric means are always used in E-C and C-E advertising to attract readers'attention, during the course of E-C and C-E advertising translation translators should try their best to make the target advertising text equivalent in the meaning, the use of language and expressing ways and the culture to the source advertising text, showing great respect to a nation's psychological features and to the expressing way of the target language to localize the translated version. That is to say, translators should make great efforts to make the target advertising text equivalent in the semantic, pragmatic and cultural equivalences to the source advertising text. But, among the semantic, pragmatic and cultural equivalences, much more attention should be paid to cultural equivalence than the semantic and pragmatic equivalence.Advertisement is a special kind of practical writing with a high commercial value and follows the principles"AIDA"(attracting Attention, arousing Interest, stimulating Desire and taking Action) for the sake of attracting consumers and their understanding. So, one thing should be noticed that the expressing way, the linguistic and cultural differences can have a strong impact on the function of advertising which will influence consumers'final purchasing action. That is to say, the language and culture are two main factors which can have a great impact on E-C and C-E advertising translation. According to the target-language oriented principle, a translator should meet the lexical, syntactic and rhetoric need of the target language; as for target-language-culture oriented principle, a translator should pay much attention to the connotation of some words and phrases in different cultures, and when necessary, should compensate much for cultural defaults in translation to make the target language best suit the advertisement culture of target language. In terms of the function of advertising and under the guidance of Nida's functional equivalence translation theory, the advertisement translation must deal with target language oriented and target culture oriented aspects to realize the function of advertisement. Therefore, the author puts forward six translation strategies: direct transfer, free translation, supplementary translation, abridgement translation, creative translation and structure-borrowing translation. Although these translation strategies are frequently used in E-C and C-E advertising translation, comparatively speaking, the direct transfer is used less frequently than the others.To sum up, as a translator, he should keep in mind that a good advertising translation can reproduce the function of the source advertising text in the target environment. Therefore, under the guidance of Nida's functional equivalence translation theory, in the process of E-C and C-E advertising translation, a translator should strive to learn about the function and the language feature of E-C and C-E advertising text and grasp some translation strategies to make the target readers'response to the translated advertising text same as the source readers'response to the original in order to realize the function and purpose of advertising.