On English-Chinese Advertising Translation

Promoted by the economic globalization, international commoditycirculation has become increasingly frequent. Advertising, as an internationalmarketing means, is indispensable, and thus advertising translation isparticularly important. The quality of advertising translation directlydetermines whether the purpose of advertising can be smoothly achieved,therefore, an effective translation theory is needed to guide advertisingtranslation. However, in some English-Chinese advertising translations,translators, without taking linguistic and cultural differences into account,adopt word-for-word translation method and only strive for the equivalenceon the text level, which often causes the translation to be far from satisfactory,let alone achieve the ultimate purpose of advertising—make potentialconsumers purchase the advertised commodities.Nida’s functional equivalence theory, with its unique perspective andrefreshing research method, creates a new translation evaluation criterion bygiving priority to content over form, paying special attention to culturalfactors and shifting the focus from static text information to dynamicreceptor’s response, and thus stands out from many other translation theories.Nida held that the receptor’s response is an important factor to judge thequality of the translation, and such response should be compared to theresponse of the original receptor to see if their responses are substantially thesame. Advertising is a special practical text type and its purpose is to catch theaudience’s attention and to persuade the audience to take action to buy theadvertised commodities. Thus, in advertising translation, the target audience’sresponse is a key to judge whether the translated advertisement is successfulor not. In this sense, the functional equivalence theory, highlighting thecommunicative function of the translation, has its significant effect on advertising translation. This thesis, through analyzing Nida’s functionalequivalence theory and advertising translation, verifies the feasibility ofapplying this theory to advertising translation, explores the way of translatingEnglish-Chinese advertisements under the guidance of this theory with theintention of improving the quality of advertising translation.