標題：在廣告翻譯中的文化差異
Abstract
As the product of culture, advertisement directly reflects close relationship between language and culture. Perfect advertising language is good for selling the product. 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
廣告作為文化的產物，可以更直接的展示語言和文化的關系。精彩的廣告語言有助于產品的推銷。與此同時，隨著經濟全球化的發展，跨文化的交流、合作日趨頻繁，廣告翻譯中存在的語言和文化的差異將影響著商業活動的發展。因此，譯者要充分利用目標文化知識，把句子后面所承載的思想、概念尤其是文化傳遞給消費者。本文就廣告翻譯中出現的文化差異現象進行了探究。
關鍵詞：廣告翻譯；文化差異；語言
1. Introduction
1.1 Background Introduction
With the development of our socialist market economy since China’s opening and Reform, advertising has been developing at a speed no one could have imagined. Since Coco-cola became the first American product available in China in 1979, 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 enterprise 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 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-culture 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.
1.2 The relationship among Language, Culture and Translation Introduction
Language is a part of culture and plays a very important role in it. It can’t equate with culture. There is no culture that has no language as its part. 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 institution, 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 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 culture 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. 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, study the language you will use in order to make sure that you would not do some errors about grammar and common sense. Second, know the cultures about the language you use so that you do less cultural errors and make the reader accept. Third, pay attention to the right way of translation. Above all, we could get the information language is an important part of cultural. 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 simply 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.
2. Translation of English Advertisement
2.1 General Introduction of Advertisement
Advertising is one of the marketing strategies in the international business activities. Advertising exit 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.
2.2 Basic Purposes and General Principles of English Advertisement Translation
2.21 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 advertisement can be summarized as follow A. Attention, B. Interest, C. Credibility, E. Action. To be more accurate, advertisements must attract people’s attention----for example, by using bold type 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.
2.22 General Principles of Advertisement Translation
The general principles of advertisement translation should be smoothness, precision and consciousness.
“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 the 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 was altered in the translation, the customers would be misled by the Chinese version.
“Consciousness” means the translator should use informative and concise diction and sentence structure. The education levels of the readers are varied, so far too complicated of difficult diction o r sentence structures in translation may take it hard for its intended readers to comprehend its information.
2.3 Linguistic Characteristics of English Advertisings and Relevant Translation Techniques
2.31 Lexical Characteristics of English Advertisements
The two words and phrases of advertisements are colorful and lively, and the only purpose of choosing a word in writing an advertisement is to “promote products”. Therefore, these phrases are usually intriguing and appealing. The lexical characteristics of English advertisements can be summarized in the following aspects
a.The Abundant Use Of Modifiers
In advertisements, there is an abundant use of modifiers to highlight the merits a product, to describe vividly the special features of the product and to enhance its appeal to the prospective customer.
Famous world-wide gourmet cuisine. Excellent daily specials and mouth-watering desserts.
世界有名的美食烹調，精美的每日特色飯菜和令人垂涎的點心。
This is an advertisement of an restaurant. We can see the adjectives account for one half of the word used in the advertisement. They show the restaurant’s features to its customers.
b.Intentional Wrong-spelling
Intentional wrong-spelling in English advertisements can arouse people’s sense of curiosity about the advertisement and impress people deeply. For example Drika Pinta Milka Day.
This is a milk advertisement. The normal form of the expression should be Drink a pint of Milk a Day. 一天請喝一品脫牛奶。
c.The Use of New Coined and Strange Words
Advertisement often invents new and strange words to highlight product’s characteristics novel, and original, so that they can satisfy the consumers who are fond of following fashion. When we translate these new coinages and strange words into Chinese, we should bring our imagination into full play because we can’t find their equivalents in dictionary
The Orangemostest Drink in the World.
This is an advertisement of soft drink. “Orangemostest” is made up of “orange+most+est” “Most” and “est” are both the superlative suffixes of adjectives. Her they are compounded with “orange” to highlight quality and purity of this advertised beverage. Its Chinese version is XX橙汁，帶給你世界一流高品質、高純度的享受。
2.32 Syntactical Characteristics of English Advertisements
a.The Rich Use of Concise and Short Sentences
Conciseness is a common characteristic of most advertisements.
Their sentences are generally short and succinct. This is because complex sentences are not easy to understand and they will dull readers’ interest in the advertisement, while brief and short sentences are vivid, eye-catching and readable. So we also use short Chinese sentences to translate such advertisements.
Coca-Cola is it.
還是可口可樂好！
Fresh up with Seven-Up!
請飲七喜，倍添精神。
b. The Plentiful Use of Elliptical Sentences
The plentiful use of elliptical sentences in advertisements is in compliance with the principle of consciousness. Besides, elliptical sentences can emphasize the key information in the advertisements.
You’ll enjoy relaxed sunny days. Warm crystal clear lagoons, cool, green foliage. Waterfalls. Flowers. Exotic scents. Bright blue skies. Secluded beaches. Graceful palms. Breathtaking sunsets. Soft evening breezes. And food that simply outstanding.
你會享受這陽光明媚的輕松日子。溫暖、清澄的環礁湖，清涼、碧綠的樹葉，瀑布，花叢，異樣的芬芳，明亮的藍天，幽靜的海灘，優美的棕櫚，壯麗的日落，輕柔的晚風，還有那絕妙的食物。
2.4 Cultural Differences in Advertising Language
2.41 The Implicit Way versus the Direct Way
In Chinese traditional culture, there is a public feeling that the words should be conservative and implicit. Because the unsaying words are very meaningful and can achieve an ideal state. In the Chinese article, there are some words that seem unrelated, which highlight the theme. To some extent, there are a few words about the peculiarities and the functions of the products. For example自己人，不玩虛的，貴府酒。鶴舞白沙，我心飛揚。朋友情誼，貴乎至誠相處，互相支持幫助。啊，滴滴濃香，意猶未盡。
In all, Chinese nation think highly of friendship. So these means mentioned above can achieve the sympathetic. The advertisements get the goal.
2.42 The Imagery Pattern versus Abstract Pattern
In Chinese traditional culture, the mode of thinking is belonging to the imagery pattern most of time. To some extent, the abstract pattern is little. Chinese people often put their feelings in the concrete objects and things. When a person sees an object, he or she will think of another familiar person. This is common sense of Chinese people. So the advertisers often show a comparably concrete sense or an analogy, in order that the readers can think of the products easily.
The thought of western people are used to be leaping and thoughtful. They prefer the abstract thinking pattern to the imagery pattern.. So they often utilize the creative language, and give the readers a kind of novel ideas in order that the consumers can get a profound and favorable impression.
2.43 Respect of Authority versus Respect of Self-performance
The authority has a great power to affect the purchase of the consumers. So this is one important feature of Chinese advertisements. The advertisers often enumerate the honors and certificates and let them occupy a pivotal position, when the advertisers introduce the products to the readers. For example ISO9001國際體系認證、“中國環保質量信得過重點品牌”稱號,中國馳名商標，中國名牌，國家免檢產品。
But different from Chinese advertisements, English advertisements have this kind of expressing way rarely. Because they have the successful realization of self-value.
2.44 Different Social History Background
So if only the advertisers design the English advertisements by taking the consumer’s essential interests as the based and by taking the idea of self value realizations as the goal, The culture center is the personal value. Western people treat the official position as the very common thing. Western culture pays more attention to the personal value and self interest. It may lead to the dissimilarity in advertising translation. When Japanese company Toyota firstly entered into the Chinese market, they created an advertisement slogan” Where there is a way for can there is a Toyota. ” This has borrowed from China’s colloquialism. But if publicized in the United States may understand that the first sentence of Declaration of Independence is “All men are created equal”, by using this borrowing sentence, Toyota made its declaration that the quality of their cars is much better than others.
3. Conclusion
We can see many advertisements in our life. Enterprises promote their products effectively by different kinds of advertisements; people can also get some useful information about products in this way. However, import and export trade have formed that the products from any other parts of the world have showed for all people. The products which represent high Tec knowledge and quality become the best choice for many people. The Chinese products also export to many foreign countries. It can solve inconvenient aspects to pay more attention to the cultural appearance in translation of advertisements.
Advertising is one of the marketing strategies in the international business activities. Advertisement exists everywhere and it influences us everyday. 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 daily life. If we want to do a good job on English advertisement translation, it is necessary for us to know something of advertisements’ characteristics. We should pay more attention to the relationship language and culture.
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