The role of translation in the production of advertisements (original) (raw)
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Advertising across cultures, where translation is nothing... or everything
2018
This article deals with the concept of 'translation' in the field of advertising, often known as 'copy adaptation.' The different advertising strategies used when adverts are published or broadcast in different countries involve different approaches to the task and the study of translation in this context. Standardisation (or globalisation) and localisation (or adaptation), two opposing advertising strategies, require different translation procedures. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which what is termed 'advertising translation' can actually be considered to be translation or not, bearing in mind existing definitions of translation and classifications of translation strategies. To this end, definitions of 'translation' from different periods of time (paradigms) will be observed, with an emphasis on the evolution that this concept, and corresponding term, has undergone as it has gradually incorporated different text types and specific translation activities. To illustrate the dynamic nature of this field of study, we will present and analyse pairs of advertisements (comprising an original advert and its translated version) in the translation of which specific strategies or solutions regarding the transfer of the message have been used. In the course of this study, a key question is posed: is adaptation different from translation or is it part of translation? The conclusion shows that transfers in advertising largely depend on functionalist strategies of translation, and therefore on translation in general.
Globalization and localization in advertising translation: a love-hate relationship?
2016
The aim of this paper is to analyse how globalization has affected the activity of advertising translation, paying heed to how globalization and localization approaches integrate translation as a strategy to promote different kinds of products and in different media. A theoretical introduction will be provided on the intercultural and interdisciplinary nature of advertising and more precisely of advertising translation, also dealing with notions like institutional norms or with the well-known expression “Think globally, act locally”. Recent examples from printed campaigns, television spots and promotional material from several websites will be analysed to show how translation reveals the contradictions and principles inherent to globalization, and the tensions, or lack of them, between globalising and localising strategies, trying to reveal signs of homogenisation of cultural beliefs, customs and images, through the detailed analysis of a global product being promoted in local marke...
Translation of Advertisements: From Adaptation to Transcreation
This paper introduces the topic by giving information about translation of advertisements. The introduction will tackle the importance of globalization and its impact on advertisements in general and then go into TV advertisements specifically. Then, I will discuss the importance of culture when translating TV advertisements with providing information about ethics and loyalty in translating advertisements. As for the corpus, I have chosen three advertisements to be analyzed and compared between their source texts and their target texts. The three advertisements are Snickers advertisement, Father and daughter Oreo Advertisement and Oreo Song Advertisement. I will also state some reasons behind choosing those advertisements. After introducing the topic and the corpus, I will focus on strategies taken when transferring advertisements from one culture into another. I will explain the two different terms adaptation and transcreation and then discuss the importance of shifting from adaptation into transcreation when translating international advertisements. Moreover, I will discuss the characteristics of TV advertisements through talking about linguistics and the graphic signs in these advertisements. Finally, an analysis of different cultural aspects and some key challenges in three advertisements will take place in order to prove that transcreation should be adopted when translating international advertisements.
Cross-Cultural Assumptions in the Translation of Advertising - How Realistic Are They?
Across Languages and Cultures, 2000
The translation of advertising as written text still demonstrates many of the problems of cross-cultural transfer which have formed the object of Translation Studies research in recent years. Source text induced target text production is very often the norm, with more of a documentary than instrumental view of the intended ST/TT relationship (Nord 1991). Marketing experts do not always fully exploit the expertise of the translator, although not to do so may (sometimes seriously) affect the success of an advertising campaign. This paper, on the one hand, seeks to highlight some of the problems observed in advertising texts in the language pair English-French and, on the other hand, to discuss the relevance of culture-specific factors of a message in the functionally-successful translation of advertising texts.
Cultural Transfer in Advertisement Translation
Babel, 1999
Advertising is a fast growing industry in modern societies. Multinational companies promote their products to various countries by means of glamorous advertisements in different languages. When a product is marketed to another country, usually the original advertisement is translated with appropriate adaptation to cater to the needs of the new market. The process of advertisement translation often is not only a linguistic transfer, but also a cultural transfer. This paper attempts to discuss the relevance of the culturally-oriented approach to translation studies, and the skopos theory as advocated by Hans J. Vermeer in particular, to the cross-cultural communication of advertisement translation. The advertiser plays the key role of Translation Initiator (TI) in the translating process, by outlining the skopos for the translator to fulfill. The paper concludes that equivalent effect is not always the primary concern of translating of advertisement, and at times cultural transpositio...
A complex mode of screen translation: the case of advertise- ments on Spanish television
This study on the translation of television commercials explores several aspects of this very specific audiovisual translation subtype. Firstly, it looks into dubbing and the language policies on Spanish television, which are issues affecting the decisions on the translation of television advertisements. Secondly, it approaches the notion of a TV 'spot' as an audiovisual text whose main components, image and sound, form a cohesive unity that is meant to trigger a persuasive effect, but may vary in translation. Finally, it analyses an example of a television spot, in English and in Spanish, fo-cusing on the manipulation of the text when it is translated for Spanish television channels.
Semiotic Problems in Translating Advertisements
Buletinul Stiintific al Universitatii Politehnica din Timisoara, Seria Limbi Moderne, 2004
The article discusses translation problems in advertising texts arising from the fact that the semiotic hybridity, that is the interrelation of cultural images, visual signals and linguistic elements in advertising texts, varies on several levels, according to the respective country involved. Translation, when seen from a static point of view, may be analysed as the result of a translator's work and can be compared with the original. In a dynamic point of view however, and this is the translator's perspective, translation is a task yet to be fulfilled, with the objective to present a message understood from a text, as comprehensively as possible for target culture readers to be able to interpret it and react to it as intended by the authors. This article discusses the phenomenological and rhetorical aspects of the translational work. The translator's integrative approach The translation assignment gains a special quality when advertising texts are concerned. Such texts are often described as a "cultural mirror", being designed around and seeking to exploit culture-specific habits, behaviour, expectations and lifestyles, for a very pragmatic purpose. The production of advertising texts involves a huge amount of market research, so that the intended audience can be very carefully targeted, the right buttons pressed and the desired responses elicited. It is an interesting question for companies to know how advertisements are actually being adapted to the different addressees and various value systems, and which semiotic instruments are used. This is important even for linguists, as in many advertising companies it is the translators who are given the job of producing an adequate ad for the own product in the foreign market. While trans-national groups tend to maintain a consistent product policy and a market strategy based on corporate identity, there is also
Translation Studies in the New Millennium 7: 75-83 , 2009
Although much has been written on translation in recent decades, very few titles have been concerned with non verbal factors in (verbal) translation, let alone non verbal translation as such. The scope of this presentation is the study of the semiotic role of translation in advertising, especially in bilingual advertisements the advertisements in which the linguistic message is written in two languages, in our case in English and Greek. At this point we must clarify that the advertisement that we will examine is a Greek advertisement, in which it’s very interesting to see the semiotic dimension of the linguistic message’s English translation. The advertisement studied is the ‘product’ of a cooperation between the Greek department store attica and the Greek airline company Aegean Airlines.
English Advertising Language Features and Translation
As a practical style, Advertising English has gradually derived from the English language due to its particular social role. In this respect, this paper will generalise the fundamental knowledge of the advertisement including its definition, objective, and writing principles. This is followed by an analysis on language features based on vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, and rhetorical devices. However, the main thrust of the thesis is not devoted to a purely linguistic study. Rather, building on the theoretical reflections of equivalent theory and cultural conversion, this paper attempts to find the joint reflecting the similar functions of both English and Chinese. Therefore, This thesis will not confine itself simply to a list of language features but rather go further and crack the "hard nut"-how to tackle translation in advertisements. Little ink, as the case stands, has been spilled over this crux.