On Translating Garment Advertising From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Clothing is one of the essentials of human life. With the increasing internationalization of garment industry, the garment enterprises have been trying to expand international markets for their products; consequently garment advertisement translation has become more and more important. Garment advertisements are mainly related with the translation of trademarks, slogans and company profiles, which convey the basic information and culture of an enterprise. So a good translation helps to attract potential overseas customers and facilitate the development of an enterprise.With the German Skopos theory as the theoretical foundation, this research is based on a collection of some domestic and international garment advertisements and their translations. The analysis is done from linguistic and cultural perspectives. The linguistic aspect includes lexical and syntactical analyses, and the cultural one mainly includes ecological stratum and mental stratum focusing on the processing of culture-loaded words. And in the light of the Skopos theory and the linguistic and cultural features of the three aspects of garment advertisements, different translation strategies are applied to the translation of English and Chinese garment advertisements, such as foreignization, domestication and conversion strategies are usually adopted to the translation of brand names while abridgment and restructuring strategies are often used in that of company profiles. Through the analyses of garment advertisement translation, it is found that in the process the translator should not be constrained by the original structure or content. A translator should adopt different translation strategies for the expected functions and purposes of the garment advertisements in the target language and culture.