Cosmetic Advertising Translation-Lighted By The View Of Reception Aesthetics

Consumers’ consuming psychology and purchasing action is greatly influenced by advertisements. Itis particularly true with the consuming of cosmetics. Therefore, how to make the cosmetic productsaccepted by foreigners on the international markets becomes a great challenge to the producers.Consequently, cosmetic advertising translation proves to be more and more important as cosmetic marketbecomes more and more internationalized. As a piece of cosmetic advertisement with high-quality willquickly attract consumers’ attention and interests, and then stimulate them into purchasing action, a piece ofwell-accepted target text can be highly significant to market-expansion and sales promotion.Reception aesthetics is a theory which stresses the role of readers’ aesthetic consciousness in theregulation of the works of art, emphasizing the readers’ subjectivity and creativity. It pays attention not onlyto the text itself, but also, and much more, to the reception of readers. The main concepts of receptionaesthetics includes: horizons of expectation, the subjective status of the reader, the indeterminacy andblanks of text, and the “vocation structure” of the text. This theory has significant implications fortranslation, especially for translation of cosmetic advertisement. According to Reception aesthetics,translators of cosmetic advertisement should focus on the effect a translation might produce on the readers,not only paying attention to the interpreting of the text, but also giving full play to the translator’s creativityand the receptor’s imagination.Cosmetic advertising translation is, a transform between languages on the linguistic level, above all,an interchange among cultures on the cultural dimension. Cross-cultural communication should seriouslyconsider the receptor’s aesthetic ability and receptivity. Only when the translator is equipped with dual-language skill and have a good command of dual-cultural ability could he/she be able to accuratelyreproduce the beauty of content and formal beauty of the original text. Only when the translated textconforms to the receptor’s cognitive psychology, language habit and cultural psychology could thetranslated cosmetic language be able to attract their attention, stimulate their interests and finally lead theminto purchasing action. Centering on the translation of cosmetic advertisement, this thesis aims to generalize some translatingprinciples and methods based on the theory of Reception aesthetics. The author applied some of the mainconcepts of reception aesthetics to her study of translating cosmetic advertisements. She gave some detailedanalyses of the advantages and disadvantages of those existing translations of cosmetic advertisings. Basedon the analyses, and in light of the reception aesthetics, the author of this thesis finally proposes sometranslating principles and techniques, hoping that her suggestions will be helpful for cosmetic advertisingtranslation.