Translation Strategies For Intertextuality In Advertisements

With the development of the commodity economy, the advancement of technology and the popularity of mass media, advertising has increasingly become an indispensable part of modern life. By means of advertisement, the goods or services of every country can enter the international market more smoothly, so they need advertising translation. The advertisement translation is playing a more and more vital role in the daily economic activity. Therefore, in recent years, a lot of articles about advertising translation often appear in the professional journals and magazines. However, most of such articles study advertising translation just from a single angle, such as the skopos theory, Nida’s functional equivalence theory and so on. This thesis takes the skopos theory and the theory of intertextuality as the basis to research translation strategies of intertextual advertisements.After famous French theorist Kristeva proposes the concept of’intertextuality’, this term often appears in a number of research areas. In order to make their advertisements more attractive and make consumers have a feeling of perfect freshness, advertising creators often employ some intertextual skills, such as parody, allusion and quotation. By means of intertextuality, the advertisements can easily arouse people’s imaginations and interests, and then produce enormous benefits. But the intertextuality of these advertisements is rich in exotic cultures. It is not in the interest of human cultural communication if the translators deal with these advertisements only on the basis of the target culture. Therefore, under the guidance of the intertextuality theory and the skopos theory, the author of this thesis formulates a methodology for translating advertisements which employ intertextual skills:advertising translators had better retain or replace the intertextual space of the original advertisements in advertising translation. Under its guidance, this thesis analyses a variety of advertisements that contain intertextual space and explores some translation strategies for this kind of advertisements.This thesis conducts a preliminary discussion of the translation of good advertising slogans from the angles of the skopos theory and intertextuality. First, the thesis reviews and summarizes the status of advertising translation studies at home; then based on the skopos theory and intertextuality it introduces the application of the theories in advertising translation. Starting from the features of intertextual advertising texts, the thesis sums up six translation strategies and types of their application in translating advertisements. This thesis is made up of six chapters.Chapter One mainly introduces the objective and significance of the study, research questions and methods, theoretical background, as well as organization of the thesis.Chapter Two gives a brief review of the relevant literature to the study of advertising translation. In this chapter, the author introduces the features and theoretical perspectives of research on advertising translation.Chapter Three establishes the theoretical framework of the thesis. First, the thesis introduces some knowledge about advertising, such as the elements of advertising texts, the functions of advertising and the features of advertising language. And it then introduces Hans J. Vermeer’s skopos theory and the theory of intertextuality. Finally, the author puts forward the research methodology of this thesis.Chapter Four shows several types of manifesting intertextuality in advertising slogans, such as quotation, allusion and parody. To prove the extensive use of intertextuality in advertising creation, the author presents many advertising cases for analysis. In this chapter, the author also analyses the function of intertextuality in advertising slogans.Chapter Five sums up six translation strategies most frequently used in translating advertisements that employ intertextual skills. They are literal translation, imitation, over-translation, under-translation, creative translation and zero translation. Many good advertising slogans and their translated texts are illustrated in this part.Chapter Six is the conclusion of the thesis. The author summarizes the main points of the thesis, and points out the inadequacies in the thesis that need to be improved. Finally, the author lists suggestions for future study.