Abstract
As many transnational enterprises are entering into China’s market, English advertisement is playing a more and more essential role in establishing a positive image of the enterprises and promoting products to the Chinese society, which makes the English advertisement translation into Chinese more and more important in enhancing Chinese people’ s information volume. However, as a practical text style, advertisement is quite different from common literary works. It has a very specific and material purpose of attracting consumers’ attention and persuading them to take action after reading, which requires that the ads texts be as fully expressed as possible in the target language so as to achieve their original values and functions such as attention, memory, readability, expressiveness, directivity, and aesthetics. Functional equivalence provides a theoretical base for the ad translation. Functional equivalence, raised by Eugene A. Nida, which implies different degrees of adequacy from minimal to maximal effectiveness factors, is defined as “in terms of the degree to which the receptors of the message in the receptor language respond to it in substantially the same manner as the receptors in the source language” (Nida 1969:24). It does not matter which language an ad is translated to, the only purpose of drawing consumers’ attention and stimulating them to purchase the product or service being advertised will never change. From this point of view, functional equivalence could be viewed as the right principle of advertising translation.
In this thesis, the author holds the view that functional equivalence should be regarded as the principle of English advertisement translation into Chinese. And functional equivalence in English ad translation into Chinese should be achieved at three levels, namely, semantic level, stylistic level, and rhetoric level.
This paper consists mainly of seven parts. The first part is a brief introduction to the whole thesis. In the second part, a brief introduction to advertising is presented, and the third part deals with the features of advertising language from three aspects, respectively, lexical, syntactical, and rhetorical. In the fourth part, the author introduces the theory of functional equivalence. Part five and Part six are the key parts in this paper. The author lists requirements and principles for functional equivalence in English advertisement translation into Chinese, and cites many examples to illustrate that functional equivalence should be viewed as the principle of advertising translation. And in the final part, a conclusion of the whole paper is made. Here the author states again that functional equivalence is the right theory to guide advertising translation.
Key word: advertising advertising language functional equivalence
advertisement translation
摘要
随着许多跨国企业进入中国市场，英语广告在为企业建立正面形象还有向中国社会推销产品中起着越来越重要的作用。这也让英语广告汉译的重要性在增加中国人的信息量的过程中逐渐突显出来。然而，作为一个实用性文体，广告与一般的文学作品有很大不同。它有一个很明确及实际的目的就是吸引消费者的注意并说服他们在阅读了广告之后采取行动。这就要求广告的翻译版也必须在目标语中达到其原始价值及功能，如注意价值、记忆价值、可读性、表达性、引导性及美感功能。功能对等为广告翻译提供了一个理论基础。由尤金奈达提出的功能对等指出了从最小到最大的各程度上的对等，被定义为“译文对译文接受者所起的作用应与原文对原文接受者所起的作用大体对等”(奈达 1969:24)。不论一则广告被翻译成何种语言，其吸引消费者注意并刺激消费的唯一目的是不会变的。从这个角度看，功能对等可以作为广告翻译的最佳原则。
在本文中，作者认为功能对等应该作为英语广告汉译的指导原则。而且，在英语广告汉译中达到功能对等必须分别在语义、文体及修辞等三个层次上实现对等。
本文主要包括了七个部分。第一部分是对全文的简要介绍；第二部分对广告作了简要的介绍，第三部分分别从词汇、句法、修辞等三个方面介绍了英语广告语言的特点。第四部分是对功能对等的介绍。第五、六部分是全文的重点部分。作者列出了在英语广告汉译过程中实现功能对等的要求及原则，并列举许多例子来说明为何功能对等应该作为广告翻译的指导原则。在最后一部分，作者对全文作了总结并重申了功能对等是广告翻译的最佳指导原则。
关键字：广告 广告语言 功能对等 广告翻译
Functional Equivalence and English Advertisement
Translation into Chinese
2.1 The definitions of advertising. 7
2.2 The functions of advertising. 8
3.1.1 Creation of new words. 10
3.1.1.4 Abnormal word collocation. 12
3.1.2 Frequent uses of adjectives and their comparative degree and superlative degree. 13
3.1.3 Frequent uses of short forms and compound words. 14
3.2.1 Using simple and short sentence. 14
3.2.2 Using interrogative and imperative sentences. 15
3.2.3 Frequent use of elliptical sentences. 16
4.1 Nida’s formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence. 19
4.2 Functional equivalence—the further development of dynamic equivalence. 20
4.3 The reasons for functional equivalence as guideline in advertisement translation. 21
5.1 Equivalence at semantic level 24
5.2 Equivalence at stylistic level 25
5.3 Equivalence at rhetoric level 25
6.1 Being natural, accurate, and concise. 27
6.2 The priority of content over form.. 28
