A Study On Advertisement Translation

With the deepening of the reform and opening up to the outside and the rapid economic development, China is playing an increasingly great role in the world and accordingly the translation of advertisement which serves as one of the ways of economic and commercial communication is of great importance. In recent years, the scholars in China and foreign countries have made a large number of studies on the advertisement translation. However, it must be mentioned that most of the studies are just undertaken at the micro level with a focus on simple language features or other superficial features of rhetorical devices. Due to the commercial purpose of the advertisement, the study of the advertisement translation is not supposed to be carried out at such micro-level as linguistic elements. And it should analyze all elements involved in the advertisement translation at a higher level from macro-point of view.The paper is mainly based on the theory of eco-translatology proposed by Hu Gengshen, a professor from Tsinghua University. He believes that translation is made in a process in which a translator makes his adaptation and selection taking eco-environment into consideration. The eco-environment of translation refers to the whole situation and condition presented by the source text, the source language and the target language, including the corresponding parts of language, communication, culture and society as well as the author, the reader and the sponsor. And the translation process refers to translators'adaptation and selection. The theory of eco-translatology which deals with translation from an ecological perspective emphasizes the studies of translation at the macro-level and describes the translator's activities under the integrated environment of translation, rather than at one-side and micro-level.The eco-environment of translation Professor Hu Gengshen proposed is mainly composed of two parts:one part refers to the objective elements such as language, communication, culture and society. The other mainly refers to the subjective elements including authors, readers and sponsors.Based on eco-translatology, the paper deals with the eco-environment and the process of the advertisement translation more systematically from the perspective of eco—translatology. With the economic globalization, the environments of advertisement translation become rather complex. As for the same advertisement, the translator may face different environments in undertaking the translation activities. Therefore, the analysis of the ecological environment of the advertisement translation is a necessary prerequisite for the advertisement translation study.As for the eco-environment, the environment of the advertisement translation consists of objective elements and subjective elements in terms of eco-translatology. And the main objective elements such as language, communication, culture and other aspects of the society are analyzed in this paper, while the next part related to the environment of advertisement translation covers the analysis of subjective elements such as translators and readers.With regard to the translation process, it includes translators'adaptation and selection according to the eco-translatology. The translation process is centered by translators'selective adaptation and adaptive selection. The research of this paper is carried out in an empirical way and from an ecological point of view to analyze translators'adaptation and selection process in advertisement translation. The adaptation process means that a translator adapts to extra-linguistic elements covering values, aesthetics, cultural taboos and social customs of the source language and the target language during the pre-translation stage, while the selection process focuses on the translator's selection of linguistic elements such as speech sounds, words and phrases as well as sentences and structures in the translation process.By theoretical elaboration and corpus analysis, the author sets forth the macro-guiding principles of the advertisement translation under the guidance of the eco-translatology theory. The basic strategies of the advertisement translation and the basic requirements for advertisement translators are explained by empirical analysis and comparative analysis. With reference to the strategies, the author discusses how to apply word-for-word translation, free translation and transliteration under the guidance of eco-translatology. Moreover, the author puts forward some basic requirements covering language, knowledge and other abilities for advertisement translators under the guidance of eco-translatology.