Advertising Communication Features and Advertising Translation ((II)

Second, the influence of advertising communication characteristics on the translation standards and the necessity and feasibility of advertisement translation

Advertising communication characteristics reflect the social functional requirements of advertisements and have a decisive influence on advertisement translation. The translation covers a wide range of areas and is limited to space. Here we only give a cursory discussion on the criteria for advertising translation and the necessity and feasibility of advertising translation.

(I) Advertising Translation Standards: The Three Equivalence Principles of Understanding, Accepting, and Responsiveness Starting from the social functions and communicative features of advertising, the author believes that the standards for advertisement translation that have practical application value should be: Advertising translation must be “understanding” by the audience (comprehension) ), "reception" and "response" are basically equivalent to the original. The audience of the translation should be able to understand the advertisement information as well as the original audience. The translation must be as attractive to the audience as the original and allow them to be audio-visual and easy to remember, and to enable the audience to respond favorably to the advertisement like the original audience (love. Buy goods) to achieve the utilitarian purpose of advertising. Relative to the general translation standards, the three equivalent standards are almost exact, but this is the actual need for advertising.

because:

(1) The feature requirements of advertising audience supremacy are similar to those of Nida's [5] functional equivalence principle (Nida proposed that one background of the equivalence principle is translation of the Bible, and the Bible is exactly the same as the advertisement to persuade the style).
(2) The advertisement promotion function requires that the translation must be a qualified part of the advertising campaign. It must be able to pass the “comprehension”, “acceptance”, and “response” to the sample target audience as the formal advertisement copy. Three aspects of the copy test.
(3) The “uncooperative” feature of advertising audiences makes it impossible for advertising translators to enjoy the attitude of tolerance of readers of such translations (such as literary works).
(4) The utilitarian nature of advertisements will not allow advertisers to risk adopting translations from another advertising campaign merely to save the hassle of another proposal. The quality of the translations will not be "have to be counted" (this is a common phenomenon in other stylistic translations). If the translation is not acceptable, the advertising person can find someone to write the copy directly in the language of the target country. In the cross-cultural communication of international advertising, copywriting is not the only way.

(B) The Necessity and Feasibility of Advertising Translation

"Necessity" and "feasibility" are frequently used words in the field of scientific research and business activities. The author transplants them to translation studies, aiming to emphasize that research translation must not only consider the “translatability” (“feasibility”) that translation circles are very concerned about, but also consider the “must-translate” (necessity) decided by their social needs. The latter problem does not seem to cause enough attention in translation circles but it actually has more influence on translation than the former. (It seems that untranslatable poetry is heavily translated. This phenomenon is the effect of “translatability” on translation. Power is better than a typical example of "translatability."

Looking at advertising translation from the perspective of social needs, it is not difficult to find that advertising translation is not necessary in most cases. The reason is seen in 3 aspects:

(1) In view of the special nature of advertising communication, mature companies and advertising companies tend to use advertisement writing directly written in the target language in advertising operations, and the copy must be based on consumer surveys and advertising ideas for target audiences. Based on it.
(2) In the era when the commodity economy and the advertising business are underdeveloped (characterized by the buyer's market and information-based hard sell advertisements, respectively, which are in excess of demand), the use of translations for advertising copywriting is not a problem for the success of advertisements. However, in the modern era in which commercial competition is extremely fierce and soft-selling advertisements are popular, that is, in countries where the categories of texts and similarities are similar, it is difficult to guarantee the successful operation of advertisements. More and more people in the industry and advertising scholars do not agree with the use of translations for international advertising operations.
(3) Although international advertising is a kind of cross-cultural communication, the main means for advertisers to overcome practical cross-cultural barriers is a cultural positioning strategy that cleverly uses cultural similarities and differences beyond translation—such as global consumer cultural position io GC.CP), local consumer cultural posi.tioning (LCCP0) and foreign constituency cultural positioning (FCCP). Whether adopting cultural commonality, naturalization or different practices, advertising copywriting is directly written in the language of the target country in most cases. There is no translation problem. However, translation still has its place in advertising, mainly reflected in: (1) trademark translation. A trademark is an enterprise or product symbol in an advertisement and needs to maintain a unified image through external translation; (2) Advertising slogan translation. Advertising slogans enable the audience to form a firm and good impression on the company or product, and are often regarded as another identification symbol of the company or product outside the trademark. If possible, advertisers and advertisers tend to translate it into the target language in international advertising operations; (3) standardized advertising (also known as global advertising - multinational use of the same advertising theme, illustration, copywriting, In addition to the necessary translations, there is no need to make any translations of the translations in international advertisements.(4) Translation of bilingual/multilingual advertisements designed for audiences of different languages ​​in the same country or region, such as bilingual/multilingual window advertisements, Shelf display advertisements, merchandise packaging advertisements, and attractions were introduced, among which bilingual/multilingual packaging advertisements were common.

Most advertisements are extremely resistant to translation. For them, ad translation is not feasible. The reasons are: (1) Advertising coding is a very complicated system project. Copywriting is only a part that is connected with its flesh and blood and is strictly controlled by each link of the system. The use of translated documents as a copy of the risk is like a heart transplant. While the complexity of the advertising coding process is present, the content of the advertising code is highly targeted. The supremacy and uncooperative attitude of the advertising audience compel advertisers to achieve their utilitarian goals, and each must Successful advertising works have a strong audience and their contextual relevance. In contrast, the context can not be carried together. Translating a copy into a copy is tantamount to unlocking it with a key that locks it. When advertising scholar Fan Zhiyu discussed the operation of international advertising, he stressed that advertisers “cannot directly translate the copywriting for country A into the language of country B. This would create a phenomenon that is inconsistent with the state of the country. It is necessary to adapt to the characteristics of the market to write advertising texts. "l9". If advertising researchers are philosophies and advertising operators are also good, more and more advertising companies will no longer have an interpreter. (2) Advertising advocating simple style and non-cooperative characteristics of the audience (both derived from the utilitarian nature of advertisements) make it impossible for the commonly used interpretation techniques such as explanatory annotations to be used in translation, and the utilitarian purpose of advertisements is to make money. Advertising advertisers can never relax their demands on translations because of the difficulty of understanding the translation. (3) Advertisement information is often coordinated by a variety of symbols. The various symbols are organically combined and difficult to resolve. This makes it difficult for translators to combine their translation purposes with the special circumstances of target audiences to selectively or variably translate the original text. Functional translation theory advocates it.

Most of the few advertisements that have translatability belong to the types of advertisements mentioned above where advertising translation is necessary - this is not a coincidence, but the advertiser uses "translated and translatable" for the purpose of utilitarian advertising. The natural result of translation strategy, the pragmatic attitude of this commercial operation, precisely reflects the cultural and social functions that have a decisive influence on translation. Packaging advertisements are different from general advertisements that are mainly based on perceptual appeal methods. The body of the advertisement is composed of two parts: the product composition and the use method. It is an information character with a very high degree of literalness. It is necessary to combine translation and retranslation in translation. Translate format expressions, interpret translating words that are more plentiful in terms of individual national conditions. After hard work, we should be able to come up with standardized target language cases. The translation of window advertisements and shelf display advertisements is similar to that of packaging advertisements. The description of the attractions that belong to the sales site advertisements has its own characteristics. The introduction content of the attraction has strong anti-translating ability because it often involves the unique local cultural customs and historical allusions, but the other characteristics of the attraction introduction—the foreign tourists who are in the spectacle and scenery are mostly interested in the content of the attraction introduction. - It makes it difficult to use the explanatory annotations that are difficult to use in general advertisements. One type of problem-solving techniques can be used to solve the translation barriers caused by cultural differences. Translation copy of standardized advertising is born on the same root as female parent—both are the materialized forms of the same creative in the same advertising operation, aiming at the common cognitive context and cultural background of different language audiences, and the mother book is being drafted. Translatability studies have also been carried out. Translation obstacles have been removed in advance, and after translation efforts should be able to achieve three equivalents. The translation of advertising slogans can be used as a reference for copywriting translation of standardized advertisements. Companies that wish to expand outwards should also conduct translatability studies when drafting advertising slogans. If the existing advertisement slogan translation is unsatisfactory, then it is not as good as an alternative sentence. Trademark translation is similar to translation in terms of degree to a certain extent—such as using free translation, transliteration, or the translation of sound and meaning, but it pursues the commercial appeal of translation. Although "one is established and ten months old", after the unremitting efforts of trademark translators, it is possible to obtain a wonderful translation with the charm of promotion. (In fact, difficult translation can use the target language to create new words based on the principle of trademark design. ). It should be emphasized that translatability is not an easy translation. Many Chinese products are accompanied by English translation of packaging advertisements, but there are countless mistakes. The translation of trademark words can easily fall into the “cultural trap”. Many articles discussing pragmatic failures or cultural errors in advertisement translation are actually examples of mistranslations of trademark words.

Third, the conclusion

The social function of advertising persuasion promotion influences the translation of advertising through various communication elements, so that it has distinct characteristics from its stylistic translation (such as literary translation). Advertising writing "to get rid of the impact of literary writing", advertising translation practice and research can not copy the path of literary translation.

This paper proposes three equivalent standards for advertising translation based on the consideration of social functions and communication features of advertising. The problem of translation standards is the focus of debate in the translation industry. Nowadays, all kinds of translation standards have their perspectives focused on the original text (and its authors), or on translations, on translation audiences, or on translators, to name but a few. The author thinks that any influential translation standards, hidden behind their focus, should be the social function of a particular style.

The standard itself is free of errors. The disadvantage is that the researcher does not follow the theory of nature and tries to be partial. If we can look at the problem from the perspective of the social function of the style, the debate over translation standards should not be so long and the construction of the translational building should not be so long-lasting. The study of translatability in translation circles focuses on the difficulty of language conversion. In fact, we also need to consider the "translatability" of style. We must also focus on the social functions of style and the social needs of style translation. This article discusses the necessity and feasibility of advertising translation. It is precisely trying to pull the stylistic social functions that have a decisive influence on translation from behind the scenes to the front desk.

Zeng Li Department of Foreign Languages, Zhuzhou Institute of Technology

Source: "Journal of Zhuzhou Institute of Technology"