On The Translation Of Popular Marketing Material From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Over the recent decades,there have been increasing economic exchanges between China and the rest of the world,and this makes international marketing increasingly important.Many books on business and marketing gain popularity by explaining theories and analyzing business cases by an easy-to-understand approach.These books are often on the bestsellers list,and some of them are even translated versions.This paper analyzes examples chosen from the translation of What Chinese Want:Culture,Communism and China Modern Consumer and discusses how to translate popular business books from the perspective of skopos theory.According to this theory,the translation of popular marketing books should follow three rules,including the skopos rule,the fidelity rule and the coherence rule,among which the skopos rule is the principal rule,the other two are subordinate to it,and in addition,the fidelity rule is subordinate to the coherence rule.These rules are closely related and they are relatively embodied in the translation of brand name,terminology,slogan,metaphor,elliptical sentence and complex sentence.In this translation project,the skopos rule requires that the translation of a brand name be consistent with its brand marketing strategy and enable readers to recognize what it refers to.The fidelity rule requires that the translation of marketing terms be accurate,unified and standardized.It requires that the back-translation of slogans be both catchy and corresponding to the brand image.The coherence rule requires that when translating a metaphor,the translator attend to the differences in the meaning of the vehicle and the differences in the readers' acceptance in different cultural backgrounds.It requires that when translating elliptical sentence,the translator consider the possibility of putting back the omitted part according to the needs of context and grammar.It requires that when translating complex sentences,the translator consider the possibility of reorganizing information according to the logical structure of the source text so as to conform to conventions of the Chinese language.