On Translation Strategies Of Advertisement From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Nowadays, advertisement plays an important role in daily life as the main adviser ofpurchasing. With the development of international trade and economic globalization,products of each nation are exported into the foreign market. In order to enjoy a highstatus in the international market, advertisement translation, as a promoting tool to attractthe foreign consumers, has become more and more important in the process of promotingdomestic products and introducing foreign ones. However, the level of the currentadvertisement translation which can not satisfy the increasing demands of society needsto be more developed.Advertisement, as a special kind of communication text, is designed with anobvious purpose to attract the consumers and to persuade them to buy the advertisedproducts, so is the advertisement translation, nothing but the consumers have changed.Therefore, advertisement translation must make the translated version meet the targetconsumers’ cultural and language habits in order to stimulate the consumers’ desire ofmaking purchase. In such case, the traditional translation theories which emphasizeequivalence and loyalty to the original text are not suitable to guide advertisementtranslation. This thesis, considering the explicit commercial purpose and the uniquefeatures of advertisement translation, attempts to analyze advertisement and itstranslation strategies from a new perspective of relevance theory, aiming to develop thelevel of advertisement translation in the practical translation process.Relevance theory is proved to be suitable to guide advertisement translation fromthe following aspects. First, in the perspective of relevance theory, the criterion ofevaluating advertisement translation is the pragmatic effects of the translated text, that is,if the translation can achieve the purpose of the original advertisement to promote theproducts in the target environment. Second, relevance theory emphasizes the relevancebetween the text and its context, according to which, the success of advertisementtranslation depends on searching for the optimal relevance between the originaladvertisement and its context as well as the optimal relevance between the translatedversion and the target context. Therefore, the difference of language and culture betweenEnglish and Chinese advertisement must be considered or grasped to make thetranslation achieve the best pragmatic effects. Third, the translator plays a very important double inferential role in the translation process, the first of which is to infer the originaladvertiser’s intention, that is, to understand the original text in the original contextcorrectly. The second is to infer the target context, including the target culture andlanguage, aiming to make the translated version achieve the adequate pragmatic effectsin the target environment.This thesis consists of an introduction, the main body and a conclusion. Its maincontents are summarized as follows:The introduction mainly discusses the previous research of the advertisementtranslation and presents the research motivation, the significance of this thesis whichstudies advertisement translation from the perspective of relevance theory, as well as theresearch approach.The main body is made up of three chapters:Chapter One is a literature review about advertisement and relevance theory. First,the chief information about advertisement is introduced including its definition, structure,functions and features. Due to the specific property of advertisement, a new and practicaltranslation theory is needed to guide its translation and appropriate translation strategiesare chosen. Second, the author presents the basics of the relevance theory, such as thedefinition of relevance, the principle of relevance as well as optimal relevance, cognitivecontext and ostensive-inferential nature of communication, understanding that willprovide a theoretical basis for its utilization to advertisement translation and thediscussion of the translation approach and strategies.Chapter Two first introduces Cutt’s translation theory based on relevance theory,which argues that translation is a special kind of communication including a doubleostensive-inferential process with three participants. In order to make a successfultranslation and meet the target readers’ expectation, the translator needs to inferaccording to the context, while the basis of inference is seeking for the relevance. Thenthe author mainly discusses the powerful guidance of relevance theory to advertisementtranslation, which is proved from the following four aspects: the pragmatic effects,searching for optimal relevance of advertisement translation, the translator’s inferentialrole and its context, which forcefully justifies the powerful explanatory nature ofrelevance theory in advertisement translation. Chapter Three plays the most important role in the whole thesis, which probes intothe translation strategies of advertisement. The author puts forward seven kinds oftranslation strategies in light of relevance theory; namely, transliteration, adaptation,literal, liberal, abridgement, parody, and over translation, which can make the translatedadvertisement achieve the optimal relevance with least processing effort of the targetreaders and thus achieve the equivalent pragmatic effects to the original one. Throughabundant examples of advertisement, this thesis proves the validity of these translationstrategies in advertisement translation.The conclusion makes a conclusion about the whole thesis. First, it makes a briefsummary to the thesis, and then research findings are concluded. The essence ofadvertisement translation is the ostension and inference to the original advertisementbetween different languages, in which translator is responsible for the two inferentialprocesses. The first is to infer the communicative intention of the advertiser in theoriginal context and give it a correct interpretation, the second is to infer the cognitiveenvironment of the target language readers and then translate the original text into thetarget language text. The original text is translated successfully or not depends onwhether it can achieve the advertisement’s purpose or function, which determines thatadvertisement translation must grasp the cognitive psychology of the target readers andmake them obtain the best contextual effects with the least cognitive efforts.