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011 Translation of Advertising in English
A Thesis
Presented to
The College of English language and Literature of
Shanghai International Studies University
In Partial Fulfillment of
The Requirements for
The Degree of Master of Arts
By
Qiu Chunyan
Under the Supervision of
Prof. Zhang Yonghua
November 1999
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1
CHAPTER 1 Some Basics of Advertising •...•.•....•...•...... 5
1.1 The Definition of Advertising
5
1.2 The Functions of Advertising ....•....•......•.•.••••••.•.• 9
1. 3 The Style of English Advertising •..•.•......•.......••.. 11
1.3.1. The Structure of English Advertising......•.•... 11
1.3.2 The Language of English Advertising.........•..16
CHAPTER 2
Principles in Translating
English Advertising ...•...........•..•.•...•.•. 25
2. 1 The Theory of Functional Equivalence •........•... 25
2. 2
Application of The Theory of Functional
Equivalence to the Translation of
English Advertising ..•....•.•........•..•...•....•...•.33
CHAPTER3 Cultural Distinctions and Translation
of English Brand Names.........•............ 48
3. 1 The Characteristics of Brand Names •................ 49
3. 2 Cultural Meanings of Words .....••.................... 51
3.3 Translation of English Brand Names ..•..........•... 54
CONCLUSION...•......................••.•.................'
62
BIBLIOGRAPHy
64
-! /
ABSTRACT
Nowadays, advertising which has become an important part of our
daily life is exerting its influence on everyone of us living in this society.
With China's ongoing reform and opening to the outside world and with the
sustained development of national economy, more and more English
advertisements have appeared in our life. These advertisements cannot work
to the desired effect unless they are properly translated for the Chinese
public. Thus the translation of English advertising is of great practical
significance to us and has attracted more and more attention.
Because of the creative and diversified use of the English language in
advertising, translation of advertising faces many difficulties. How to make
a translation of an advertisement both accurate and attractive is a great
challenge to the translator. In this thesis we will discuss the problems in
translating English advertising on the basis of the theory of functional
equivalence and suggest the principles underlying the translation. Focusing
on the functions of advertising, this thesis attempts to solve some basic
problems arising from advertising translation. The study, far from
comprehensive as it were, also touches upon some practical issues,
including the bridging of cultural differences when translating English brand
names into Chinese, and it may therefore be helpful to the translators of
.
advertising and our further research in this field.
飞、 2
内容摘要
今天广告已经成为我们生活中密不可分的一部分，它不仅影响着
我们的经济发展，也影响我们的价值观念和文化生活。随着我国改革
开放的深入发展，越来越多的英语广告随着进口商品进入我国。如何
翻译好这些英语广告，以便让它们在中国消费者中能够发挥更大的影
响，已经成为一个热点引起越来越多的关注。
广告文案的创作往往具有很大的创意性，它语言多变，形式多样，
这给广告的翻译带来很大的难度。如何使一则广告的译文既忠实于原
文，又具有广告的功能与美感是每一个译者都面临的问题。本文以广
告的功能为线索探讨了广告翻译中的一些实际问题。广告的翻译并不
应该只追求形式上的忠实与对等，而是应该寻求译文与原文能够达到
同样的引导消费者的效果。因此本文应用了著名翻译理论家奈达的功
能对等理论并在此基础上试着提出了英语广告翻译的原则。本文与翻
译实践紧密相连，讨论了广告翻译中的一些基本问题，包括英文商标汉
译过程中的跨文化现象。对于我们的翻译实践以及今后在这一领域的
进一步研究，本文将会起到一定的指导作用。
/
\- ? I
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis owes its existence to the keen guidance of Professor Zhang
Yonghua, my supervisor, who has devoted her precious time to reading each
draft and making critical comments.
I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to Professor Feng Qinghua,
Professor Qiu Maoru, Professor Nie Zhenxiong and all the other teachers of
the college of English language and literature. Their enlightening and
conscientious teaching has provided me with a firm basis for the composing
of this thesis and will always be of great value to my further academic
research.
I would also like to extend my deep gratitude to my dear parents,
brother and friends, whose constant encouragement and support have made
all my accomplishments in school possible.
INTRODUCTION
Advertising, as a way of publicity, can be traced back to 3000B.C..
'In the ancient ruins of Pompeii, you can see messages advertising
gladiatorial events. Town criers in ancient Greece acted in the same manner
as
car
radios
as
they
announced
important
news
and
public
events.'(Berkowitz, Kerin & Rudelius, 1986: 496) But it was not until this
century that it really began to enter our daily life. Along with the rapid
development of social economy, nowadays, advertising has found its way
into all walks of life and every aspect of society. Whenever we open a
newspaper or a magazine, turn on the TV, or look at the billboards in metro
stations or on buildings, we are confronted with advertisements. Advertising
has become an inseparable part of our daily life and is likely to affect most
of us in a number of different spheres of our life. 'It not only plays an
important role in our economic life, but also becomes one of the most
important cultural factors moulding and reflecting our life.'(Wilmshurst,
1985: 12)
In the 1990s, the advertising business in the world has undergone some
great changes. More and more multinational companies have shifted their
attention to the global market, especially to those largely untapped markets
in developing countries for sales and profits. This caused the phenomenal
development of international advertising. In China, with our reform and
opening to the outside world being further deepened and with rapid progress
in our economy, more and more foreign companies have focused on the
Chinese market. They have brought to us not only their products, but also
many of their advertisements to propagate their products. Thus we are
exposed to more and more English advertisements. How to translate English
- 1-
advertising has become an issue of important practical significance.
Translation is a kind of work which involves languages. Therefore
before translating advertising, we must have a thorough understanding of
the language of advertising. Just as what Vestergaard and Schroder said in
the preface of their book The Language ofAdvertising, 'advertising takes
many forms, but in most of them language is of crucial importance.'
Effective language is the prerequisite of a successful advertisement. Now
the English for advertising has become a special variety of English with its
own unique style and characteristics, and its close relationship with
linguistics, psychology, economics, sociology and aesthetics has caused
some difficulties to the study of it. In recent years, scholars have done much
research work in this field and have made some great achievements. In our
country there also appeared some books talking about the English for
advertising. But much of the research is focused on the lexical features,
grammatical features of advertisements or the usage of some rhetoric
devices, and on generalizing some 'golden rules', such as the common
usage of short sentences and simple words. But sometimes when we read
English advertisements in magazines or saw them on TV, we may find that
such 'golden rules' are not always observed. In fact in today's English
advertisements, the language takes a great variety of forms, the sentence
patterns vary a lot and the choice
or words is free. In advertising virtually
we can find every type of writing. Thus even the 'golden rules' sometimes
will become helpless before the vivid and diversified use of the English
language in advertising.
Then does it mean that no rule exists in English for advertising? Of
course there do exist some rules. The language of advertising is a kind of
loaded language which is greatly persuasive. As a tool of commerce, it is
different from language for literature or language for science and technology
- 2-
since its intention is to persuade the readers to buy. Thus all the features of
English for adverting are closely related to the functions of advertising. No
matter what form it has taken, as long as it can fulfill the functions of
advertising, it is effective. So when studying the English for advertising, we
should not focus our attention just on the language phenomena, such as the
usage of words or sentence patterns, but on linking the usage of language
with the functions of advertising and on analyzing how the language serves
the functions of advertising.
In view of this, we should evaluate the effectiveness of the language of
an advertisement by asking whether its function is fulfilled. A translated
advertisement should also meet this standard. So faithfulness in advertising
translation should first of all mean faithfulness to the functions of the
original copy, rather than faithfulness to the form or the message itself. In
this respect, translation of advertising is different from translation of other
works. And as the language of advertising is free in usage and has a variety
of forms, it is quite difficult to translate. With the growing influence of
advertising on our life, more and more people begin to work in this field and
some achievements have been made. But anyhow the research is far from
enough and there are still many problems left to be solved.
In this thesis we will mainly discuss the translation of English
advertising into Chinese. We will discuss the standard and the principles of
translation and analyze some difficult problems in translating practice. The
whole thesis will focus on the functions of advertising, the determinant
factor in advertising, and all the questions discussed in this thesis will be
closely related to the functions of advertising. It consists of three chapters,
the fist chapter will discuss the definition, functions, structure and language
features of advertising. The second chapter will mainly deal with the
translation of English advertising. In this chapter, Eugene Nida's translation
- 3-
theory of functional equivalence will be applied to the translation of
advertising and on the basis of the theory, some principles of translating
English advertising will be suggested with examples to demonstrate them.
The third chapter will discuss the translation of the English brand names, a
practical key problem all translators of advertising will meet in the process
of translating, focusing on the cultural differences between English and
Chinese.
For the convenience of discussion, in this thesis the term 'advertising' is
used in its narrow sense, referring to the commercial consumer advertising,
and only in its printed form.
- 4-
CHAPTER 1 Some Basics of Advertising
Before discussing the translation of English advertising, it is quite
necessary for us to have some background information on advertising. First
we will give a clear definition to advertising and consumer advertising,
which is what we will deal with exclusively in this thesis; then we will
discuss the main functions of advertising and the style of English
advertising determined by its functions, including its structure and its
language features.
1.1 The Definition of Advertising
What is advertising?
The word advertising derived from the Latin word 'advertere', which
means 'to tum toward'. On the basis of this Latin word, in the 15th century, .
the word 'advertir' appeared in French. This word means 'to attract other's
attention'. The English word 'advertising' was borrowed from this French
word, and didn't have any great change in meaning at first. It was not until
the end of the 17th century when large scale of business activities appeared
in Britain that the word 'advertising' has got its present meaning as 'the
action of calling something to the attention of the public, especially by paid
announcements. '(Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 10th edition: 18)
The Definition Committee of the American Marketing Association
defines advertising as:
"Advertising
is
the
nonpersonal
communication
of
information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about
- 5-
the products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the
various media."
(Mandell, 1984: 3)
The key words here are 'nonpersonal', 'paid', 'persuasive', 'identified',
and 'media'. First, advertising is directed to groups of people and therefore
is nonpersonal in nature. This is why it is different from personal selling.
Second, most advertising is paid for by the sponsors. Many big American
companies annually spend several hundred million dollars or even several
billion dollars in sponsoring advertising. Third, for a message to be
considered an advertisement, the sponsor must be identified. This is why it
differs from public relations, as certain public relation activities like
publicity are normally not openly sponsored. Fourth, most advertising tries
to be persuasive----to win the consumers' trust to a product, service, or an
idea. This is the purpose of advertising and also is the reason why
companies sponsor it. Fifth, most advertising reaches us through mass
media-e-namely the newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Only
when a message fulfill the above five requirements can it be called an
advertisement. Here is an advertisement quoted from Newsweek, Sep 26,
1992:
GILLETTE SENSOR
The only razor that senses and adjusts to the individual needs of
your face.
Gillette Sensor: the shave personalized to every man.
It starts with twin blades, individually and independently mounted on
highly responsive springs. So they continuously sense and automatically.
adjust to the individual curves and unique needs ofyour face,
Innovation is everywhere. You can feel it in the textured ridges and
- 6-
the balance of the Sensor razor. You appreciate it in the easy loading
system and the convenient shaving organizer.
Even rinsing is innovative, the new blades are 50% narrower than
any others-i--allowing water to flow freely around, for effortless cleaning
and rinsing.
All these sensor technologies combine to give your individual face a
personal shave-s-the closest, smoothest, safest, most comfortable.
The best shave one can get.
Gillette
This is an advertisement made by Gillette Company for its new product.
It fulfills the five requirements of advertising mentioned above: 1. it is
nonpersonal, and directs to all the consumers. 2. the sponsor----the Gillette
Company---- pays for it. 3. the sponsor can be identified as the Gillette
Company. 4. its purpose is to persuade readers to buy this new product. 5. it
reaches the consumers through the mass media as it is printed on the
magazines.
Torben Vestergaard and Kim Schroder in their book The Language of
Advertising divide advertising into noncommercial and commercial
advertising. (Vestergaard & Schroder, 1985: 1-14) 'As examples of noncommercial advertising, one may mention communication from government
agencies to citizens like the British metrication campaign, or appeals from
various associations and societies, whether their purposes are charity or
political propaganda.' (ibid, 1) Here is an example of noncommercial
advertising:
GRANDMOTHER
HANDED DOWN A LOT MORE
- 7-
THAN HER CHINA
Unfortunately, no one ever taught Grandmother how to be a good
parent. Or how to cope with the problems of everyday living. And
grandmother, helpless as she was, took those problems out on her daughter.
Today that daughter has children of her own. And they endure child
abuse from a mother who learned it from the grandmother everybody loves.
Help destroy a family tradition. When people are helpless, love isn't
enough. It is estimated that there are at least one million of child abuse in
American each year. And most of the children in those cases grow up each
year. And most of the children in those cases grow up to be child abusers
themselves. Child abusers can be helped. Find out what it takes to break the
cycle.
PREVENT CHILD ABUSE
National Committee for Prevention ofChild Abuse
(from
«J ~ 5iH-B- » by ~ tit)
This advertisement is sponsored by a charitable organization for the
purpose of persuading people to stop maltreating the children. As it does not
aim at gaining profit, it is a noncommercial advertisement.
Commercial advertising can be divided into three types. First is the socalled prestige advertising, 'where firms advertise not a commodity or a
service, but rather a name or an image'. (Vestergaard & Schroder, 1985: 1)
This type of advertising aims at creating long-term good will with the public
rather than at an immediate increase in sales. The second type of
commercial advertising is known as industrial or trade advertising, where a
firm advertises its product or services to other firms. In industrial
advertising, both the advertiser and the prospective readers have a special
interest in and a particular knowledge about the product or service
- 8-
advertised. The third type is commercial consumer advertising. This kind of
advertising appeals to the general consumer to promote sales. This is what
most people mainly associate with the term 'advertising'. This type of
advertising is the most frequent type on which most money and skill is spent
and the type which affects us most deeply. Here is an example ofconsumer
advertising:
YOU MANAGE A BUSINESS, STOCKS, BONDS, PEOPLE
AND NOW YOU CAN MANAGE YOUR HAIR.
For the first time, there's a remarkable gel that can give your hair any
look you want-i-s-sleeker; fuller, straighter, curlier, more natural, even wet---without a drop ofalcohol or oil. It gets your hair into shape in the morning
and keeps it under control all day. Whatever you management style,
Maltplexx is for you. Get the full facts at the Aramis counter.
ARAM
MALTPLEXX natural hair gel for men.
(from New York Times, May 16,1993)
As consumer advertising is the most commonly seen type, it is what we
will specifically talk about in this thesis. And as printed advertising is easier
to study than other forms of advertising, such as the TV advertising, because
TV commercials extend in time and make use of combined effect of sound
and picture, we will deal exclusively with printed consumer advertising in
this thesis.
1.2 The Functions of Advertising
From the definition of advertising, we may find that advertising usually
- 9-
tries to be persuasive. This means that the ultimate aim of all advertisements
is to persuade the readers to buy some commodities or services. By
achieving this aim, advertising plays an important role in our life. In the
process of persuasion, it somewhat affects people's ideas and way of
thinking. Thus it has great influence not only in our economic life, but also
in our social and cultural life. Generally, the functions of advertising are
summarized from the following five respects:
(1) Function of Conveying Information
'Conveying information is the most fundamental function and
objective of advertising.' (iJIlJI 00, 1994: 265) Advertising is like the bridge
that connects the producers and the consumers. It presents the message to a
large group of people through the mass media. People can learn about the
products that are available to them and learn how they can better their lives.
The era we live now is an era of information, and advertising works as one
of the most important conveyers of information.
(2) Function of Persuasion
'Advertising is an art of persuasion.' (Berkowitz, Kerin & Rudelius,
1986: 507) It aims to influence people, to persuade them to buy
commodities, and to prompt consumers to make choices which are in
conformity with the purposes of advertising. 'Advertising is one of the most
important and powerful tools of promotion in the market.'(ibid)
(3) Function of Image Building
'Advertising can effectively create and build up the image of a product
or that of an enterprise, and so enhance its reputation.'(Mandell, 1984: 125)
A good reputation of a product or its producer can make the consumer
believe in its quality and distinguish it from other products. Image of a
product is a kind of invisible treasure for the producer.
(4) Function of Stimulating Consumption
- 10-