A Relevance-theoretic Study On English-Chinese Brand Name Translation

With the further reforming and opening-up of our country and the development of world economic globalization, commodity production is booming, which leads to an increasingly fierce market competition. A lot of commodities of famous brands from all over the world swarm into Chinese market and left deep impression on Chinese consumers, such as Casio (watch), Bens (car), Nike (shoes) and Spirte (soft drink). Similarly, plenty of Chinese commodities exported to the foreign markets and their brands made a great success, such as Haier (electrical equipment), Bosideng (down jacket), and Founder (computer) and so on. Now people realize that brand is not only the sign of commodity but also a bridge that bridges the commodity and consumers. A brilliantly translated brand name will help attract consumers and inspire their enthusiasm for purchase, thus bring huge economic benefits for the company. The advertising of commodity is a vital means for international market to promote commodities and compete with others. Thus, proper translation of brand name is of great significance and the study of brand name translation is necessary.In recent years, brand name translation is explored by many scholars in China and they have harvested great achievements in this field. However, the theoretical research is still far from sufficient. It is necessary to find some theory that can apply to the brand name translation practice effectively. As an important component in advertising translation, brand name translation has its own law and needs systematic study while the traditional translation theories cannot meet these needs.In terms of the translation process, translators work as a mediator between the author of the original text and the target reader of the translated text according to relevance theory. On the one hand, translators find out the optimal relevance of the original text, which is between the author’s ostensive text and the source cognitive environment, so as to form the appropriate cognition and understanding of the original text. On the other hand, translators make their own understanding of author’s communicative intention ostensive to the target reader in an optimal relevance way. Based on the original text and the source cognitive environment, translators find out the optimal relevance after further inferring the various relevancies’information and rebuild a new optimal relevance and finally convey such relevance to target reader.In the light of relevance theory, brand name translation should fully take target consumers’cognitive environment and psychological expectations into consideration to achieve the greatest contextual effect with the smallest processing effort. From the viewpoint of optimal relevance, the author collects and analyzes a large number of successful translated brand names to support relevant views and proposes some strategies and concrete techniques, which provides a strong theoretical support and guidance to its uniqueness.The whole thesis consists of five parts. Introduction presents the background, purpose, significance, methodology of the study as well as the structure of this thesis. In Chapter Two, the author reviews the predecessors’research findings of brand name translation and relevance theory in translation studies. Chapter Three is the brief introduction to the relevance theory and some key concepts are discussed in detail, such as ostensive-inferential communication, relevance and optimal relevance. Then relevance theory in translation is fully explored. Translation is an ostensive-inferential communicative process and can be essentially considered as a process of searching and rebuilding optimal relevance between source language and target languages’cognitive environment by the translators.In the fourth chapter, beginning with the basic knowledge of brand and brand name, the author has a discussion of the feasibility of applying relevance to brand name translation. Then the author concludes that brand name translation contains two ostensive-inferential communicative processes with three parties:the original designer, translators and target consumer. First, the original designer makes his informative intention ostensive to the translators. Through mutual cognitive environment, translators infer the original designer’s communicative intention to reach a cognitive consensus with the designer. Then translators manifest the information and inferred intention to the target consumer by a cognitive expectation way that is in accordance with the target consumer’s expectation and acceptability level. Only when the target consumer does get the same or similar meaning of the brand name or infer the same or similar communicative intention and accept the products will the successful communication be achieved. In essence, the translators seek for optimal relevance between the original brand name and the source cognitive environment firstly and then rebuild a new optimal relevance between the translated brand name and the target cognitive environment. Additionally, the author proposes four optimal relevance strategies, namely, optimal relevance of sound, meaning, function and emotion. Translators can combine it with some concrete translation methods such as transliteration, literal translation and combination of transliteration and literal translation to enhance cognitive effect and promote successful communication between producers and target consumers.The last part is the conclusion. First, the summary of the present study is made. Then the limitations of the present study are pointed out and the suggestions for further studies are also put forward by the author. Based on the whole thesis, the author is sure that relevance theory does enlighten brand name translation which would provide a new perspective in expanding advertising style translation studies.