On Translation of Chinese Advertisements

On Translation of Chinese AdvertisementsWritten by Luo XiangminDirected by Dong ChuanqianA thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Art in the School of Foreign LanguagesGuizhou University for NationalitiesApril 2007On Translation of Chinese AdvertisementsThesis statement: Translation of Chinese advertisements into English are very important for exporting Chinese goods to foreign countries.Outline：I. Introduction.II. The Features of AdvertisementIII. Criteria of TranslationVI. Techniques for TranslationV. ConclusionAbstract: Advertising activity is a culture exchange as well as a kind of economic activity. And advertisement culture is a second culture just subordinated to business culture. Consequently, translation of Chinese advertisement to English is becoming more and more important. According to the features of advertisement words, we should pay attention to some aspects on the translation of this.Key words:Advertisement Features Translation TechniquesOn Translation of Chinese AdvertisementsI. Introduction.At present, advertisement plays a very important role in the world. We live in a world that can not without advertisement. With the in-depth of the international division, the enhancement of developing and global economic integration trend, international circulation of commodities is getting more and more. In order to improve the national mixture power,every country is competively promoting the national products, especially in our country. After we entered the World Trade Organization and the world economic globalized, our country meet many problems, they are: how to develop our economy and how to promote the made in China products‘reputation, how to face the new challenges. A very important method is to make other countries know China and its culture and developing situation. Among many ways, advertisement is a very useful solution to solve China’s problems. It can introduce Chinese goods and popularize the reputation of the products and Chinese culture to the global.The market economy system in our country becomes more and more perfect and the economic activities in foreign economy increased everyday, so we know that the other country’s products culture from the English advertisements. We can see that the advertisements not only bring many products to our Chinese people but also the culture.Similarly, Chinese advertisements do not only introduce the goods of China to foreign consumers, but also the culture. In history, Silk Road have introduced Chinese silk to other countries and spread Chinese ancient culture. Other countries knew more than about China and then China’s economic would grow rapidly.Above all, translation of Chinese advertisements into English is very important for growing China’s economic and spreading Chinese culture. In view of this, I would like to give my ideas about how to translate Chinese advertisements into English.II. The features of advertisements“Advertising publicizes the advantage of the product and persuades the consumer to buy it, thus simulating the consumer’s demand for the product for the product.”[程瑜蓉，2003：] Advertisements provide valuable service to the society an its members, for they define for consumers the meaning and the role of products, services, and institutions. Advertisements are remarkable language. Most advertisements have common features. They are: attractions, interest, desire, and action. A good advertisement should attract the consumers and direct their attention to the products. And the introduction and publicity of an advertisement should arouse consumers’ great interests. The pub licity of advertising should stimulate consumers’ desire to buy the products, and make them realize that this product is just what they want. Every person knows that a wonderful advertisement could make consumers to response to the advertisement information and evoke them to take the action of purchasing.Advertisement words have a very clear personality in form, as careful and neat writing style, antithesis and rhyme, strong rhythm dense. Many advertisements using pun to make the readers remember them as soon as possible, for pun could help the advertised product win favor from readers. “It is undutiful that advertisements always consist of advertisements, because advertisements would introduce the functions of a product.”[江涛，2001：413] In order to make the information accessible to audience effectively, the choice of words in advertising is very cautions and skillful. The aim of the advertiser is quite specific.The advertiser is the sender of information and all the advertising activities should be consistent with the purpose and willingness of the advertiser. Therefore, the advertiser is the main body of advertising, namely, every advertisement should have its specific owner of the advertising information. It is easy for the target audience to recognize the company and the products of advertisement, which will promote the propaganda and the sale of its product. And it will establish a high reputation for the group, enterprise, or the individual in order that the consumer will trust the brand. Advertisers wishes to capture the attention of the members of audience and by means of impressive words to persuade them to buy a product or behave in a particular way.Advertising information is the principal contents an advertisement wants to disseminate. Advertising is a serious of planning action, so the information of advertising should be aimed at the certain target market and consumers, and should avoid aimlessness. The dissemination of information should be accurate, definite, recognizable and moderate in length. An effective advertisement involves not only “what to say”, but also “how to say”.A good advertisement is something for thought that you do not forget it easily .Using emotional words in a advertisement can attract people and make them feel moving. In a word, the features of advertisement can be conclude as the following aspects:“the using of words and pictures are proper, the advertisements must attract the readers’ attention, catch consumers’ interest and desir e and make people take action of buying the product.” [刘法公,2004:130]III. Criteria of TranslationEarly in the Tang Dynasty the learned monk Xuan-Zhuang designed criteria of translation with emphasis placed on accuracy and general knowledge. In the Qing Dynasty,严复(Yan Fu) established a three-character standard in translation: “信” (faithfulness), “达#” (expressiveness), and “雅”(elegance). After the May 4th Movement, 鲁迅 (Lu xun) proposed“信” (faithfulness) and “顺” (smoothness) as the criteria of translation. In the last decade of the 18th century, Alexander Fraser Tyler, professor of history at Edinburgh University, laid down three fundamentals by which a translation should be made or judged. They were (1) A translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work, (2) The style and manner of writing should be of the same character as that of the original and (3) A translation should have all the ease of original composition. In his book Essay on the Principles of Translation, Tyler illustrated those fundamentals with a wealth of examples, which put his book in a class by itself. “The criteria of translation must be definite and practicable; otherwise they could hardly be fulfilled.”[肖君石,1992:13]Interpretation can improve the exchange of cultures and develop the national economic. [赵桂华,2003:4] Interpretation is a kind of language action. The aim of language action is to exchange our thoughts style. NaDa said that translation equals receptor language changes into source language. Translation does not belong to creation but recreation. When we translate a job, we can not express our ideas about this work but the author’s. Translation requires us to understand no less than languages, because two languages stand for two cultures. Every culture has its own style of thoughts and expressions, so we may find that it is difficult to search the absolute equal word, phrase, sentence to translate into another language. I want to take a Chinese word“学校” as an example. Generally speaking, this word is translated as “school”. In fact, “school” in English can be refers to primary school, high school college or university. So when we translate Chinese into English, We must learn English very well and use it freely.Advertising culture is a second culture just subordinated to business culture. Translation of Chinese advertisements into English is a procession of culture exchange. A good translation of advertisement do not express what its Chinese meaning , but also make people understand its English meaning. Translating Chinese advertisements into English need us control a rule that what features does the advertised product has which include quality and usages. When we translate Chinese advertisements into English, we would pay attention to that whether it attract foreigners or not, or has given the English consumers deep impression. An advertisement has no effect is because it has no attraction.“We must pay attention to that the using of words i n English advertisements should be local English which contains both oral and formal English when we translate Chinese advertisements into them.[李亚舒1994:364] I saw a product’s name is 乌鸡百凤丸。