功能对等理论指导下广告语的英译研究英语毕业论文.doc

A Study on the C-E Translation of Advertisement under the Guidance of Functional Equivalence
功能对等理论指导下广告语的英译研究

Thesis Statement

With China's entering WTO, globalization has also affected the world of advertising. Advertisement translation as a type of intercultural communication and as a result of international communication gradually attracts the translator's attention. This research aims at improving the approaches to the English translation of Chinese advertisement and points out that Nida's Functional Equivalence is one of the most appropriate theories for English translation of Chinese advertisements. This thesis analyzes English translation of Chinese advertisements under the guidance of Nida's Functional Equivalence from five perspectives, namely, textual perspective, lexical perspective, syntactical perspective, rhetorical perspective and cultural perspective. This thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 works as the introduction. Chapter 2 is literature review. Chapter 3 deals with the English translation of Chinese advertisements under the guidance of Nida's Functional Equivalence theory and Chapter 4 is the summary of the thesis.

A Study on the C-E Translation of Advertisement under the Guidance of Functional Equivalence
1. Introduction
1.1 Background of the study
In contemporary society, advertisement can be seen everywhere. Advertising, as a major means of conveying information, is playing an essential role in business world. Becoming an indispensable part of our daily life, it serves as a chief source of information. After the carrying out of opening-up policy and China's entering into the WTO, advertising has become a powerful approach for those Chinese companies to promote their products as well as penetrate into oversea market. However, because of the lingual discrepancies and cultural differences, an advertisement sometimes may not necessarily be accepted and understood by receivers in a foreign culture, partly because of inappropriate translation. Therefore, as a special branch of translation discipline, advertisement translation is gaining more and more importance.
Advertisement translation is different from other kind of translation due to its pragmatic style with commercial value. Advertisements aim at attracting consumers' attention, satisfying their consumption needs, inspiring their desire of purchasing goods or services and finally making products or services sold. In order to realize the above-mentioned goals, translators should abandon the traditional idea of literal translation but to interpret it in the thinking of those receptors, namely the foreign customers. A translated version becomes successful when it is accepted by customers in the target language society. The truth is that a translated text is not always faithful to the original text in form. As a result, literal translation does not always work in advertisement translation, especially when there stands cultural obstacles. In this case, traditional equivalence-oriented theory is no longer satisfactory and a new and more practical theory is naturally called for. Hence, a new theory---- functional equivalence, is finally introduced and put into use.
1.2 Significance of the study
The study on advertising translation is meaningful both theoretically and Practically. Theoretically, it intends to apply the functionalist theory to study advertising translation, aiming at improving the quality of the translation of advertisement. In academic field, translation, especially the advertising translation has become more and more important and has attached great interests of scholars.

Practically, the thesis, by discussing the principle concepts of translation, analyzes the daily application of the functionalist equivalence in the translation of advertisements. In the meantime, the author tries to find out a better way to handle the practical advertising translation. Consequently, the author in the light of functionalist approaches, redeems that target-culture oriented strategy should be regarded as the essential method to translate advertisements. In addition to that, the author also hold the opinion that advertising translation should be in conformity with target language and the target culture as well even though it may bring about some changes in form and content of the original text.

1.3 Organization of the study

The thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter 1 is a general introduction which mainly deals with the background and the significance of the research. Chapter 2 is a literature review which contains two parts, namely, a introduction to Nida and his well-known functional equivalence; some previous research, both home and abroad, on Chinese-English advertising translation applied to functional equivalence. Chapter 3 is the core part of this thesis and in in this chapter, the author tries to illustrate the specific translation of advertisement from several perspectives, namely, textual perspective, lexical perspective, syntactical perspective, rhetorical perspective and cultural perspective. In order to make a full explanation, the author employs many examples both home and abroad. Chapter 4 is the conclusion in which the limitation of this thesis as well as some related suggestions are put forward.

Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Nida and Functional Equivalence

As a linguist, Nida devoted almost his entire life into the translation of the Bible in the progress of which he developed his own translation theory which is well-known as “Dynamic Equivalence”, later to be called “Functional Equivalence”. In his theory, Nida pointed out that “Translation consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style.”（翻译是用最恰当、自然和对等的语言从语义到文体再现源语的信息）(Guo Jianzhong, 2000:65）．He declared that functional equivalence should include four parts, namely, the equivalence of lexical, syntax, texture and style among which “meaning takes the first priority and then comes the style.”(Guo Jianzhong, 2000:67). As a prolific writer, Nida was determined to produce a theory that would foster the effective communication of the Good News across all kinds of cultural and linguistics barriers. His first famous book Bible Translating（《圣经的翻译》）was published in 1946; then in the year1964, his most influential book Toward a Science of Translating（《翻译的科学探索》）came out; and later The Theory and Practice of Translation （《翻译理论与实践》）helped him achieve this objective.

The term “equivalence” in translation was first introduced in J.R.Firth’s writing when he stated that “the so-called translation equivalence between two languages are never really equivalent” (Snell-Hornby, 1988:37). The theory of functional equivalence was formally put forward by a great American linguist, Eugene Nida, in order to narrow the gap between the source and target language. In his book From one Language to Another, he changed the term “functional equivalence” to “dynamic equivalence”. The so-called “function equivalence”, as Nida explains, is “in contrast, a translation which attempts to produce a dynamic rather than a formal equivalence is based on ‘the principle of equivalent effect’. In such a translation, one is not so concerned with the source-language, but with the dynamic relationship, that the relationship between receptor and message should be substantially the same as that which existed between the original receptor and the message.” The nature of translation is to make different cultures communicate freely as if they were not foreigners to each other. In his theory, Nida believed that “Translation consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style” and that “Absolute correspondence between languages is not always possible.”(Nida, 1964:185).

Nida generally divided his theory into four parts: word equivalence sentence equivalence, texture equivalence, and stylistic equivalence among which it is the very meaning rather than the specific style that counts.

2.2 Previous researches concerning C-E translation of advertisements Guided by Functional Equivalence

The translation of advertisement has been researched and analyzed by many scholars both home and abroad. In western countries, advertising translation was first discussed by Hurbin. At that period of time, linguistic study of translation generally focused on the concept of equivalence, which is "submitted to lexical, grammatical, and stylistic analysis; it is based on text type and social function. (Venuti2000:121). Hurbin holds the idea that there are many type of translation for the source text and that it is the translator who is responsible for choosing the most suitable translation version. With time passing by, equivalence was no longer considered as the most important factor while doing translation activity and functionalism gradually gained great importance. Thus, functional equivalence finally came into being and has been playing a vital role in the translation field.

A famous scholar, Tatilon, basing on Nida's idea of functional equivalence, points out four fundamental functions of advertising texts, namely, identifying function, laudatory function, ludic function and mnemonic function as well. He thinks that the function model should on the one hand, take target text into consideration and on the other hand give importance to source language.

According to Guidere, a translation version should keep a certain equivalence between the original text and the target text to ensure the effectiveness so that the receptors can understand. However, the equivalence should not be limited to the lexical level and should not be loyal to the source language only. A translation version must be effective enough to deliver information and ensure the good communication for the producers and the consumers. In that regards, Guidere puts forward several methods to analyze the translation of advertisements which refers to semantic way, communicative way and rhetorical way.

In China, advertising translation became a hot topic among scholars in the 1990s. It is mainly composed of three parts which refers to the study on English advertising, the methods of advertising translation and the argument about which theory is the most suitable and effective to guide the translation of advertisements. In the past, advertising translation was deeply influenced by the equivalence-oriented theory which has its own shortcomings. In accordance with the traditional point of view, translation is defined as a faithful reproduction of the source language both in form and in content which turns out to be imperfect.

Equivalence is considered as a core factor of translation theory, but a compete and total equivalence is impossible to be obtained. Therefore, one must take a flexible attitude toward advertising translation, giving first priority to effectiveness and functionalism, then take equivalence into consideration.

Chapter 3 The C-E Translation of Advertisement Guided by Functional Equivalence

The main figure of advertisement can be seen in the principle of AIDA which is the abbreviation of "attention", "interest", "desire", and "action" respectively. It is obvious to find that the AIDA principle aims at attracting readers' interest and attention, recalling their pursuing desire, and finally stimulating them to take action to buy.(Wells, Sandra & Burnett 2006:102)

3.1 The C-E Translation of advertisements from lexical perspective

Because of the special intention of convincing potential customers to consume products or services, the lexical character of advertisement is quite different from that of other types of writing. In advertisement, some verbs and adjectives are frequently used, which can on the one hand, achieve the purpose of delivering information, and on the other hand, stress the expressiveness of advertising language. Although advertisement in China doesn't have a long history compared with that in western countries, it still has its unique characters among which four-character compounds can be considered as the most distinctive. The following are some typical examples:

(1) Chinese version: 滴滴香浓，意犹未尽。
English version: Good to the last drop.
It is an advertisement for Nescafé. After reading the advertisement, what appears before the consumers is a cup of coffee with so good flavor that people can't help drinking it to the last drop. Just imagine who can resist Nescafé after reading this advertisement. Its English version transmits the feeling the original version implies, thus making the Nescafé be welcomed by all Western people. In this sense, it achieves the functional equivalence.

(2) The Chinese version:
优良的质量，优惠的价格，优质的服务。( “三优”牌 家具）
The translated version:
Unrivaled quality; Unbeatable prices; Unreserved service.
The pattern of this brand is three U. And in the original advertisement, the first characters of these three short sentences are same, they are both “优”.So the translation has English letter “U” and the meaning of good. This is a successful translation and it achieves the functional equivalence.

(3) The Chinese version:食在广州.
The translated version: East or west, the Guangzhou cuisine is the best.
The Chinese version means the most delicious food and the best cuisine are in Guangzhou. It is easy to find that the translation is an imitation of the English proverb, "East or west,home is best". It is a successful rendition, because of two reasons: first, the successful employment of parody makes the rendition quite easy to read and remember; second, it has revealed the intended meaning of the source, thus having realized functional equivalence.

When doing advertising translation from lexical prospective, two points should be beard in mind. First of all, a reasonable use of ambiguity should be considered. Ambiguity refers to " a lingual phenomenon where a certain language or a certain discourse has two or more meanings." In advertising translation, ambiguity is a two-end sword which will attract consumers' attention if sensibly used and if not, will cause a lot of troubles and misunderstandings. For example, a famous cigarette More put its advertisement as " I’m More satisfied." which has two meanings. For one thing, it means "I am satisfied and I want more", and for another, it means "I am satisfied with More and I want more More". By translating in this way, the product successfully leaves a deep impression on the readers and let the consumers can't help considering to buy such a product.

In addition to that, advertising translation should bear the consumers reaction in mind rather than the form. The purpose of translation is to realize the goal of pursuit and comm