英语毕业论文The-Cultural-Differences-in-Advertisement-Translation.doc

中英广告翻译中的文化差异
The Cultural Differences in Advertisement
Translation

Abstract: As the product of culture, advertisement directly reflects close relationship between language and culture. Prefect advertising language is good for selling the products. At the same time, the world is getting increasingly globalized, there are more and more communication and operation of cross-cultural, advertisement translation reflect the commercial activities. Therefore, translators have to convert the ideas and thoughts behind the sentences into the target language by applying the knowledge of the target culture. This paper studies the situation of culture differences in advertisement translation.
Key words: advertising translation；culture difference；language

摘　要：广告作为文化的产物，可以更直接地展示语言和文化的关系。精彩的广告语言有助于产品的推销。与此同时，随着经济全球化的发展，跨文化的交流、合作日趋频繁，广告翻译中存在的语言与文化的差异将影响着商业活动的发展。因此，译者要充分利用目标文化知识，把句子后面所承载的思想、概念尤其是文化传递给消费者。本文就广告翻译中出现的文化差异现象进行了探究。
关键词：广告翻译；文化差异；语言

Contents

Ⅰ.Introduction ………………………………..……….…….………...1
A. Background Introduction……………………………………...…….1
B. The Relationship among Language, Culture and Translation Introduction.2
1. Different definitions of language……………………………………2
2. Different definitions of culture………………...……………………2
3. The different definitions of translation………………………………2
4. The relationship among language, culture and translation……………3
II. Translation of English Advertisement…………………………...4
A. General Introduction of Advertisement…….….……….……….…….4
B. Basic Purposes and General Principles of English Advertisement Translation into Chinese………….…….…….……………….……....5
1. Basic purposes of English advertisement translation into Chinese…...5
2. General principles of advertisement translation…….……………….5
C. Linguistic Characteristics of English Advertisings and Relevant Translation Techniques………………………………………………6
1. Lexical characteristics of English advertisements………………….…6
2. Syntactical characteristics of English advertisements……………........7
D. Cultural Differences in Advertising Language……………………......9
1. The implicit way versus the direct way………………………..........9
2. The imagery pattern versus abstract pattern…………………….....10
3. Respect of authority versus respect of self-performance………….....11
4. Difference social history background………………………….…...11
E. The Makings of a Translator…………………….………….…...12
1. A Translator must be well acquainted with the source language……..12
2. A Translator must be well acquainted with the target language….......12
3. A Translator must be armed with professional knowledge needed…...12
III.conclusion………………………………………………………….13
Work Cited……………………………………………………………14

The Cultural Differences in Advertisement Translation
I. Introduction

A. Background Introduction
With the development of our socialist market economy since China’s opening up to the outside world, advertising has been developing at a speed no one could have imagined. Since Coco-Cola became the first American product available in China in1979, foreign products have been flooding into China. With the rapid development of international business in the world, there is a growing need for efficient international advertising translation in order that these products could be accepted by consumers easily. International advertising translation is of great significance in internationalizing of China’s enterprises and opening the global market for made-in-China products under the circumstance of globalization of world economy. Therefore, there has been a great many of scholars who have studied advertising translation from various perspectives. More and more books and articles about advertising translation have played an important role in how to promote the sales of commodities abroad. However, the studies of advertising translation are not given enough attention. There are two reasons that the author makes a decision to study the topic: on the one hand, along with the fast development of the internet and information communication technology, the international advertising would be promoted to a new step and the advertising translation would enjoy unprecedented development. The importance of advertising translation tells its own tale; on the other hand, the study of advertising translation needs to be improved, for a great number of scholars have only analyzed the examples and strategies of advertising translation sketchily. In order to make the Chinese-English advertising translation more satisfactory, this thesis focuses on the analysis of cross-cultural pragmatic failure in Chinese-English advertising translation and examines appropriate strategies for doing the translation well.
Any country or nation has their own unique traditional cultures including values, modes of thinking, moral rules, customs, life styles, etc, which forms the differences among different nations on culture. How to do the right ads? It is important to know the culture of others. So we should study the relationship among language, culture and translation in order to do the right choice when we choose. This paper is composed of three parts. In the first chapter, the author will deal with the translation of English advertisements. It includes general introduction of advertisement basic purposes and general principles of English advertisement translation into Chinese and linguistic characteristics of English advertisements and relevant translation techniques. Chapter two is explaining some methods of intercultural advertising translation. The makings of translator will be mentioned in Chapter three.
B. The Relationship among Language, Culture and Translation Introduction
1. Different definitions of language
What is language? The following definition includes any levels of language generally: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbol used for human communication. (Zhang 1). In the book “Intercultural Communication in English” (Yu,Lisheng 2004), there are the following definitions:
Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotion and desire by means of voluntarily produced symbols (Sapir 1921).
From now on I will consider language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements (Chomsky 1957 ).
In my opinion, language is just a way to communicate with other people in order to get the purpose for ourselves.
2. Different definitions of culture
There are some more than 250 kinds of definitions concerning culture. There are some common definitions about culture. In some ways of life, there are the definitions:
1) The customs and beliefs, art, way of life and social organization of a particular country or group.
2) A country, group, etc. with its own beliefs, etc.
3) Culture consists of all the shared products of human society (Robertson 1981)
4) Following the definitions of sociologist and anthropologists, our team culture refers to the total pattern of beliefs, customs, institution, objects, and techniques that characterize the life of a human community.
In my opinion, culture belongs to the history. It developed by the development of history,
3. The different definitions of translation
Translation is one of the most complex and the most difficult activities of human. “However, translation, in a narrow sense, is the practice of finding the equivalent both in form and essence between two cultures. The two terms translation and translating should be distinguished for a translator. Translation just refers to the act that the translator translates from one language into another, and translating is the process in which the translator does his best to convey the message of the source language. Furthermore, translating is not a word-for-word conversion, but a process of bilingual communication between two different languages. It expresses the message of the source language from the receptor language message, and the relationship between receptor and message should be substantially the same as that between the original receptor and the message”. (He 1) There are other definitions of translation.
Translation is the process to make the meaning which is taken a cultural language into another cultural language
The process of changing something that is written or spoken into another language.
For purpose, translation is a process of changing something like words, picture or anything else in order to get the things that we want.
4. The relationship among language, culture and translation
Language is a part of culture and plays a very important role in it. It can not equate with culture. There is no culture that has no language as its part. Language is strongly influenced and shaped by culture as a mirror. Culture is reflected in language, and at the same time it exists in the intellectual structures that a certain group use their language. In this sense, we ought to pay special attention to cultural aspects when we are engaged in the task of translation. However, the relationship between them is not just that between a part and the whole. It is much more complex than that. Language is the carrier and container of culture and it also exerts its influence on culture. Human knowledge and experience are described and stored in language. Customs, habits and behavioral patterns can be described and analyzed in language. Social institutions, value systems, beliefs, world views can be described, analyzed and evaluated in language. Even the visual arts like painting, sculpture, and dancing and auditory arts such as music and singing can be described and evaluated in language. To be sure, culture can exist in the form of materials. But language as the medium of communication is indispensable in their production and use. It is concluded that language and culture are closely related, influencing and shaping each other. To learn a foreign language implies to learn the culture in which it is spoken. A language can never be learned in a cultural vacuum. Culture is learned through language. Without language as the medium for formal or informal instruction, no culture could ever be learned. Some social scientists consider it is the keystone of culture. Without language, they maintain, culture would not be possible. On the other hand, language is influenced and shaped by culture; it reflects culture.
Social scientists tell us that culture differs from one another, that each culture is unique. As cultures are diverse, so languages are diverse. It is only natural that with difference in cultures and languages, differences often arise in communicating between cultures and across cultures. Understanding is not always easy. (Deng 3) Every one of us should know the fundamental cultural difference between Chinese and native speakers of English. The team native English speaker includes people of many countries…Americans, Englishmen, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders and others. Each of these belongs to a culture that is somewhat different from the others, in spite of their common language. So if we do something about foreign culture. We have to knowledge something about culture.
Translation is an important part of language. How to translate well? In my opinion, it is necessary to know the detail of the language. If you feel studying language is a difficult thing, you will fail to translate. When you do translation you should pay attention to following things:
First, to study the language you will use in order to make sure that you would not do some errors about grammar and common sense.
Second, to know the cultures about the language you use so that you should do less cultural errors and make the reader accept.
Third, to pay attention to the right way of translating.
Above all, we could get the information: language is an important part of culture. We can not separate language from culture. The view is important for learning communication by using language. Translation is a part of language. Language is the necessary condition of translation. Translation is not only the changing of language, but also it is the changing of culture.
Due to the relationship and characteristics among culture language, and translation, in other words, it is the process of rendering the culture underlying the language. It is not simple understood as an activity on linguistic facet. We hold that to translate from one language into another, in a sense, is to translate the culture of the language. (He 314 )

Ⅱ.Translation of English Advertisement

A. General Introduction of Advertisement
Advertising is one of the marketing strategies in the international business activities. Advertisements exist everywhere and influence us every day. According to a statistics, one third of the present-day newspaper’s space is used for advertising in England. Advertisement is a widely used medium of communication in business activities in our modern society. Therefore, it is necessary for us to know advertisements’ characteristics.

B. Basic Purposes and General Principles of English Advertisement Translation
1. Basic Purposes of English Advertisement translation into Chinese
To do a good job in advertisement translation, we should first know the aim of advertisements. The goal of advertisements can be summarized as follow: A. Attention, B. Interest, C. Credibility, D. Desire, E. Action. To be more accurate, advertisements must attract people’s attention----for example, by using bold typr and eye-catching pictures. Next, advertisements must arouse the prospective customers’ interest in the product and build credibility for the product. Then advertisements should be able to arouse a buying desire that finally leads to a purchasing action. If the translation of an advertisement can not achieve these effects of the original, it will be a failure.
2. General Principles of Advertisement Translation
The general principles of advertisement translation should be: smoothness, precision and conciseness.
“Smoothness” means to use smooth and natural Chinese expressions that Chinese customers can accept to give the information about a product. Whether the translation of an English advertisement is excellent or not depends on the response of its receivers. Only when the Chinese readers’ response to the translation is similar to the original readers’ response to the original advertisement, will the translation achieve its purpose. To achieve this, the first step is to translate the original with smooth Chinese expressions.
“Precision” is also demanded by the advertisement’s function. If the meaning of the original advertisement were altered in the translation, the consumers would be misled by the Chinese version.
“Conciseness” means the translator should use informative and concise diction and sentence structure. The education levels of the reader are varied, so far too complicated or difficult dic