On Translator’s Subjectivity In Commercial Advertising Translation

With economic globalization and internationalization of the commodity market, commercial advertising has penetrated into all spheres of our modern society, acting as important access to information sources for most enterprises and consumers. In order to expand into the international market, a growing number of enterprises export commodities, which highlights the increasingly important role of advertising translation in promoting product sale, market economy and international exchanges.In addition, advertising translation, with its own inherent law, deserves a systematic study. Although many domestic and overseas scholars or translators have devoted themselves to research on advertising translation, the studies are far from being satisfactory, since most of which concentrate on advertising translation strategies and advertising texts. While the translator, as the most dynamic factor in advertising translation activities, is always ignored and has not caught due attention. Particularly within the framework of traditional translation theories, many still stick to fidelity to the source text and pay little attention to the function of advertisements, which greatly restricts the translator’s creativity.In this case, the thesis makes a tentative study on the translator’s subjectivity in advertising translation under the guidance of Skopostheorie in order to make a breakthrough in advertising translation theory and practice."Skopostheorie", the most influential translation theory of German functionalist school, contends that translation is a human purposeful intercultural interaction and that the end justifies the means. This theory undoubtedly lays a solid theoretical foundation for the translator’s subjectivity in advertising translation and provides a new research perspective.Based on Skopostheorie, the thesis firstly proves that it is necessary and reasonable to give a full play to the translator’s creativity in advertising translation and then points out that translator’s subjectivity includes initiative, agency and passiveness, which means the translator’s creativity is restricted by different translation subjects including the commissioner, the target reader and the translator himself. So the translator must fully consider the impact of various internal and external restrictive factors in translation activities to well exert subjectivity. Only by combing a full exertion of creativity with consideration of constraints of restrictive factors, can the translator exert his or her subjectivity effectively. Therefore, the translator should adhere to the translation brief given by the commissioner as well as target-oriented translation strategies, improve individual vocational ability, flexibly use translation methods such as free translation, creative translation and supplementary translation, to meet the needs and expectations of the target reader, finally to achieve the skopos of translation and help create maximum profits in the target-language market.