German Functional Theory Under The Guidance Of Chinese-english Advertising Translation

With the advent of information age, and the acceleration of global economicintegration, advertising has become a key to business success. People have alreadyrealized its significance to the company. Today, China’s economy develops rapidly.Products “Made in China” can be found all around the world which helps spreadChinese culture to the whole world. Therefore, advertising not only possesses economicfunction, but also cultural function. In order to bring Chinese products and Chineseculture to the world better, Chinese-English adverting translation will play a pivotal role.Advertising is a very practical style of writing. It can directly affect what the consumerspurchase and even the quality of their life. Therefore, good advertising will eventuallyattract and persuade consumers to buy the services and products that it advertises. Thisis the purpose and main function of advertising. Thus, a good English version ofChinese advertising can not only make English consumers understand the informationof products, promote the sales in the global market, but also promote world cultureintegration.In our current economic situation, a systematic study of C-E advertising translationhas important social and economic value. Advertising translation, as a branch oftranslation is different from other branches for its unique characteristics. That is, toachieve its desired effect---to persuade and attract the readers in the target languageenvironment. Traditionally,“equivalence-based theories” are highlighted. Such theoriesemphasize the “faithful” and “equivalent” principle. It focuses on the originalreproduction of the form and content of the source text in the target text, which fails toachieve the expected purpose of advertising translation. It’s necessary to find anothertheory to fulfill the function of advertising English in the translation process.So there are functionalist approaches, which were born in Germany in1970s,represented by Nord and other German scholars. Functionalist approaches state that theenvironment of translation determines whether the TT should own special features, andalso stress the importance of the purpose of the target text in the process of translation.Translation always has its specific purpose. Whether the target text should be loyal tothe source text depends on the purpose of translation and the cultural differencesbetween the target language and the original language. It is an important supplement totraditional theory of translation and makes a breakthrough in translation field. German functionalist theory claims that “the end justifies the means”. It is notrestricted with certain translation strategies. The core concept of the approaches isSkopos theory. Therefore, this theory is very suitable for the advertising translationwhich has special purpose.This thesis systematically describes the functionalist approaches in Germany,introducing its background and the development process and takes it as the theoreticalframework. The skopos rule and the loyalty rule are two general rules of the approaches.The core of it is the skopos rule. Coherence rule (intratextual coherence) and fidelityrule (intertextual coherence) are subordinate to the Skopos rule. The author explainshow the functionalist approaches can be effectively applied in C-E advertisingtranslation by describing their main concepts. In addition, the thesis introduces thefeatures and functions of advertising and discusses linguistic and cultural features ofEnglish advertising. The author cited a number of examples to analyze the applicationof the functionalist translation theory in the C-E advertising translation and severalstrategies are discussed under the guidance of this theory, such as direct transfer,adaptive transfer, cultural compensation and creative translation, expecting to improvethe advertising translation in our country.This paper consists of five parts. In Chapter One, the author briefly describes theresearch background and theoretical framework. Chapter Two systematically introducesthe background and development of functionalist approaches, pointing out the concepts.Chapter Thee explains the purpose and function of advertising. In the meanwhile, it alsointroduces the features of English advertising, which is worth getting attention in orderto fulfill the purpose of C-E advertising translation. Chapter Four explains the standardsand strategies of advertising translation through the analysis of many authenticadvertisements. The last part is conclusion, presenting the main findings of the thesisand points out the limitations.