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On Cross-cultural Translation Strategies Of Foreign Publicity English From Perspectives Of Functionalism

Posted on:2013-01-25Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:P LiFull Text:PDF
GTID:2215330374963126Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Foreign publicity stands for all kinds of activities that China uses foreign languages topublicize herself to the rest of the world. As English has become an internationalcommunicating tool, this paper mainly focuses on English language foreign publicity. Actually,due to the urgent need of globalization and modernization of China, English foreign publicityactivities have been conducted both by the Chinese government and mass media consciously,and by people who use English for certain purposes unconsciously such as business, tourism,and teaching. During all these formal or informal activities, Chinese to English translation (C-Etranslation) has played a crucial role in realizing the ultimate goal of foreign publicity, whichincludes enhancing the country image, reinforcing foreign countries' ties with China, andguaranteeing the benefits of China in the international arena. Thus, how to improve the qualityof C-E translation of foreign publicity materials is important and imperative not only for theChinese government but also for ordinary English users and learners.Although C-E translation in China has a long history, it is until the founding of new Chinain1949that she starts to use C-E translation for foreign publicity purpose. After years ofpracticing C-E translation in China, more and more scholars and translators have started torealize that only by the literal-to-literal translation in this filed, can it satisfactorily fulfill itsduty in political, cultural, and even the literal field, let alone exerting its function incross-cultural publicity. Nowadays, there are many problems exposed themselves in morefrequent usages in C-E translation of foreign publicity materials such as lacking of culturalawareness, lacking of a uniform translation standard, lacking of high qualified translators andcorresponding systematical researches. Targeting at above problems in this field, this papermainly tries to arouse peoples' cross-cultural awareness when they use English as acommunicating tool and search for some ways to better off the situation of C-E translation forforeign publicity purpose.In order to realize this goal, the paper firstly briefly browses the development of foreignpublicity translation in China, figuring out what achievements have already been made byscholars and translators in this field and what problems they are concerned. Readers have anidea that cultural barriers are always the bottlenecks of C-E translation of foreign publicity.Secondly, the paper is going to introduce functionalists' theories. Functionalists' theories are ageneral name, including many different theories brought up by different scholars. The coreconcept of functionalists is to solve the problems in translation where linguists failed. So thepaper chooses several representative theories such as Reiss and Vermeer's action theory,Skopos' theory, Nida's functional equivalents theory,Domestication and Foreignization, ecause they can give us some inspirations about bicultural translation. All these discretepieces of functionalist theory enlighten us that rather than rigidly conform to the grammaticalrules during bicultural translation, we should pay more attention to the hidden profoundmeanings between target and source languages. Through those rules and findings fromfunctionalists we can find out how the cultural factors affect the C-E translation of foreignpublicity and what strategies can be used for reducing cultural barriers. Thirdly, this paperfurther analyzes the causes of cultural barriers and possible cultural mistakes lies in C-Etranslation of foreign publicity field.At last, this paper collects many flesh examples from latest government foreign publicitymaterials, which have been classified and re-organized to prove that we can avoid the negativeeffects from culture and even take advantages of the special cultural features to enhance thequality of C-E translation in foreign publicity field. And the writer also attempts to bring outfour principles such as principle of purpose-oriented, readers-oriented, plain English and ChinaEnglish, which may enlighten readers on how to create a natural and satisfactory Englishtranslation for foreign publicity purpose. Besides, specific translation methods recommendedhave been summarized by the writer in the last part of this paper, which helps us to solve theconcrete cultural problems during foreign publicity translation processes.
Keywords/Search Tags:functionalists, foreign publicity, C-E translation, culture, translationstrategies
PDF Full Text Request
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