目的论视角下的商标名翻译

论文总字数：43708字

摘 要

习近平在中国国际进口博览会的讲话，标志着我国开放程度进入到一个新程度，即让中国的经贸伙伴国通过对中国更多的出口分享中国国内市场。因此，未来将有越来越多的外国产品涌入中国市场，商标翻译也在中外贸易中吸引了越来越多人的注意。本文在总结前人研究的基础上，以翻译目的论为指导框架，结合诸多的商标翻译实例，阐述了在英语商标翻译过程中，应如何进一步突出商标翻译的目的性，即引起注意、产生兴趣、激发欲望、完成消费行为等， 提出了商标翻译应遵循识别原则、可接受性原则、显著性原则和音译法、意译法、音意结合法等翻译策略，并在文章最后提出了一些商标翻译的建议。

关键词：目的论 ；商标名 ；翻译策略

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. Skopos theory and trademark translation 6

3.1 Skopos theory and its “purpose” 6

3.2 Trademark and its “purposes” 8

3.3 The convergence of Skopos theory and trademark translation 9

4. Trademark translation from the perspective of Skopos theory 11

4.1 Translation principles 11

4.2 Translation strategies 12

5. Conclusion 15

Works Cited 17

1. Introduction

According to World Intellectual Property Organization, trademark is the sign used to distinguish the industry or commercial business or the goods of such enterprises. The information of goods can be provided by the trademarks to some extent, and the trademarks can help consumers identify and purchase a product or service. For merchants, trademarks are conducive to expanding the influence of brands, establishing a good image and promoting sales of products.

With the development of economic globalization, the trademark of a commodity also begins to show the trend of globalization, and translation is the fundamental way to achieve trademark internationalization. When an enterprise wants to promote its products to the international market, it should first do a good job in trademark translation. Because in the commercial communication, it is one of the important factors, second only to the quality of the products. In the international trade, one of the important factors is the quality of trademark translation. A good trademark translation can have unexpected effects, such as attracting the attention of the target group, giving them a good association, stimulating their desires of shopping and finally buying the products. However, unsuccessful trademark translations will not only bring heavy economic losses to enterprises or countries, but also affect the image of enterprises or countries.

After China International Import Fair, more and more commodities will flood the Chinese market in the future, and the trademark will also become an important medium between Chinese consumers and commodities. In summary, the study of trademark translation has great significance.

Many Chinese and foreign scholars have studied trademarks from the perspectives of the inter-cultural communication, the functional theory, the aesthetics and so on; most theories are based on the theory of linguistics. With the development of international trade and the practice of trademark name translation, people also find shortages of linguistic theories when using them to guide practice.

On the basis of summarizing the previous study, this paper finds Skopos theory has guiding significance for the practice of trademark translation. Under the guidance of Skopos theory, according to the needs of the trademark translation, the translator can rewrite the original trademark, which makes it suitable for the target consumers; it will not be constrained by the original expression and content to make the trademark translation more practical. Therefore, this paper combines the purpose of trademark translation with the Skopos theory, and focuses on analysing convergence with the purpose of trademark translation. What"s more, it puts forward the trademark translation under the guidance of Skopos theory should follow the recognizable principle, acceptable principle and obvious principles. Finally, this paper will provides some suggestions about strategies of the trademark translation, such as free translation, the combination of transliteration and free translation, creative translation, in order to interpret the art of the trademark translation well and avoid the economic loss caused by the trademark translation, which can maximize the publicity effect.

2. Literature Review

Today, trademark translation is getting more and more attention. People have done a lot of research on the trademark translation from different perspectives, such as the inter-cultural communication, the functional equivalence, and the aesthetics. Because past trademark translation studies were guided by these different theories, this chapter will briefly review their different perspectives.

From the perspective of inter-cultural communication, translation is not simply a transformation of two different languages, but also an extremely important cross-cultural communication activity. (Li 74) Any trademark word has its own cultural connotation. Translation of trademark words is essentially a special form of intercultural communication, and the effect of communication depends on the quality of trademark words. Due to the differences in cultural backgrounds such as geographical location, religious beliefs, and economic development levels in different countries, there are also differences in people"s understanding of trademarks, ways of thinking, aesthetic tastes, and consumption concepts. It can be seen that translators are required to be acquainted with two different languages, when they translate the trademark. What’s more, it also requires translators to be familiar with two different cultural backgrounds and their similarities and differences, so as to accurately convey the commodity information contained in the trademark and to promote the sale of commodities. Therefore, according to the meaning and function of the special symbol of the trademark words and its cultural characteristics, the trademark words of intercultural communication must have three levels of information—instruction information, aesthetic information and cultural information. (Tang 157) Instruction information requires the translation of the trademark word to describe the function of the product as much as possible, which is also the requirement of the advertising function of the trademark word itself. Aesthetic information, that is, the translation of trademark words needs to conform to the trademark characteristics of the target-language, so that the translated trademark words are simple and easy to remember, beautiful in sound, shape and meaning. Cultural information means that the translation of trademark words should be consistent with the cultural requirements of the target-language, such as national psychology, religious traditions, and consumer psychology. In the cultural background of the source language culture and the cultural background of the target-market, if the meaning of the trademark word is similar or substantially identical to the cultural connotation, you can use literal translation or free translation; if the meaning of the indication is different or completely opposite to the cultural connotation, the translator must have good awareness of intercultural communication. In addition, the translation of trademark words also needs to consider the cultural elements of the traditional concepts, and customs in the target-language, thus avoiding trademark translation errors and achieving the intended purpose of trademark translation.

From the perspective of functional equivalence, Katharina Reiss, founder of function theory of translation, in the book called Possibilities and Limitations in Translation Criticism, which is based on the theory of equivalence, pointed out that the good translation should be to make the translation and the original text in the conceptual content, linguistic form and “communication function” to achieve equivalence, but she also pointed out that there are exceptions in translation practice. Sometimes due to some special translation requirements, the functional characteristics of the translation may not be consistent with the counterpart of the original text. In this situation, people should firstly consider functional equivalence rather than the equivalent standard. (Li 76) After that, the American translator Nida proposed “functional equivalence”, but it did not completely jump out of the shackles centered on the original text, because the “functional equivalence” at this time is the premise of the same meaning and function between the translation and the original text. Therefore, for the traditional static “functional equivalence” standard, the functional school proposes a dynamic “adequacy” standard to reflect the extent to which the translation achieves the intended purpose of translation. In order to achieve functional equivalence between the translation and the original text, the translator must complete the translation behavior for a specific purpose of translation; according to the translation requirements of the initiator, the purpose of translation can be changed. When choosing a translation strategy, the functionalists also stress the critical role of the purpose of translation. (Li 107) The theory of “functional equivalence” breaks through the translation method of the “equivalence” standard and opens up a new research perspective for trademark translation. When foreign goods enter the Chinese market, because of the differences in Chinese and Western language culture and consumption habits, trademark translation is no longer a simple conversion of language, but rises to the level of cultural psychology and market positioning. At this time, the traditional theories of translation, which required the translation to be equal with the original, are no longer appropriate for trademark translation, and the functional theory, which stresses that the function of equivalence of translation and the original text are more important than semantic equivalence of them, provides the translator with a new research perspective. Therefore, under the guidance of the theory of functional equivalence, the function of the translated name of the trademark is consistent with the function of the trademark. When translating trademark translation, first of all, it is necessary to pay attention to the translation of trademark words to conform to the characteristics of the goods—having a good promotion and the function of advertisement; secondly, it is necessary to pay attention to the profound meaning of the trademark words, which can give people a good association. As a result, it can stimulate the target-consumer’s desire to purchase.

Aesthetic of translation pursues the unity of formal beauty, meaning beauty and acceptance beauty. It inherits and draws on the theory of acceptance and Gestalt Psychology. It infiltrates the aesthetic concept into translation practice and uses the aesthetic perspective to understand, appreciate and accept the original text and translation. The beauty of the trademark word can be reflected by the pronunciation, the utterance, the lexical meaning, the spelling form of the trademark word, and its connotation; the trademark translation should try to get beautiful words, accurate meaning, and harmonic sound, in order to give consumers a feeling of beauty, which can stimulate consumers’ desire to buy—it is exactly what the producers want to achieve. (Zou 90) Therefore, in the translation of trademarks, the differences of cultural aesthetic psychology and aesthetic consciousness between Chinese and Western should be fully considered, and aesthetics theory should be used flexibly to make the trademark translation name achieve the same aesthetic effect as the original name of the trademark, so as to establish a good position in the Chinese market, to gives consumers a good association and to inspires their desire to buy products.

In regard to the perspective of trademark translation theory, this chapter briefly reviews three perspectives that have been discussed above. It is undeniable that the cross-cultural, functional equivalence and aesthetic perspectives have enriched the theory of trademark translation, but they all have some similar limitations. For example, the translation of trademarks from a cross-cultural perspective makes people pay more attention to the cultural level, which is beneficial to avoid economic losses caused by cultural differences. However, it still fails to get rid of the limitation of the theory of traditional translation, which focuses on the similarity between the translation and the original text. And it still pays attention to equivalence between the translation and the original text or the perfection of the translation, which often leads to a gap between the result of translation and the purpose of translation. In order to effectively achieve the purpose of trademark translation, the translators can pay more attention to the expected purpose of trademark translation, rather than the form of translation; then the translators choose the best way to translate the trademarks. Only in this way can the result of trademark translation be as consistent as possible with the purpose of trademark translation.

What"s more, the ultimate purpose of practice of trademark translation is to stimulate the desire of target-consumers to purchase products, and to achieve the effect of the promotion. It can be seen that the practical effect of trademark translation should be paid attention to by the translators. Based on this situation, the author believes that Skopos theory is more appropriate for trademark translation, which stresses the practical effect of translation. Because Skopos theory will starts from the purpose of translation of the trademarks. Then it adopts different translation methods according to its purpose (method under the guidance of Skopos theory), so that it can make up for the shortages of practical guidance of traditional theory of translation. Next, this article will analyze the meaning of Skopos theory for trademark translation.

3. Skopos theory and trademark translation

3.1 Skopos theory and its “purpose”

3.1.1 The formation and development of Skopos theory

In the book Groundwork for a General Theory of Translation published in 1984, which was written by Vermeer and his mentor Reiss, there is the systematic introduction about the main ideas of Skopos theory. Firstly, Reiss’s research is the basis for the formation of Skopos theory. In this stage, Reiss found in the practice of “equivalence” (The translation is equal the original text about the form, content and communication function.)—the translation and the original text are not likely to be completely equal with each other at any time. And sometimes you should not pursue this kind of equivalence. Due to some special situations, there are different request for the translation; at this time, the functional features of the translation are the primary factors, which the translator should consider, rather than the equivalence.

Then, according to the research of Reiss, Vermeer created Skopos theory based on the “behavior” theory, and Skopos theory has broken through the equivalence theory centering on “equivalence”. Vermeer believes that the studies of translation cannot only depended on linguistics and offers the following arguments. Firstly, he believes that translation is not just a linguistic process; secondly, he believes that linguistics has not yet raised the question of real difficulty in translation. Therefore, he puts the idea that human behavior has their purpose, and any form of translation should be regarded as an act, so translation is also an act that has a purpose. Therefore, the translator should consider all the factors related to translation under the guidance of the purpose, and then choose the most appropriate translation method to achieve the intended purpose.

After that, Skopos theory was supplemented with three principles—the principle of purpose, the principle of coherence and the principle of loyalty. Subsequently, Manttari proposed that translation is a complex activity with a specific purpose, and the translation is determined by the intended purpose of the translation, rather than the original text. The translator can achieve the purpose and adopt the translation strategy that he considers appropriate. However, this has been questioned by many theorists.

Finally, on this basis, Nord introduced the principle of “function and loyalty”—the translation must be compatible with the original intention, except that the required materials must be compatible with the original text.

Now, Skopos theory is widely accepted. Moreover, in the field of practice, Skopos theory has been used to guide the translation of operational texts, such as advertising translation, trademark translation, and so on.

3.1.2 The “purpose” in Skopos theory

The “skopos” in Skopos theory comes from Greece and has the meaning of “purpose, motivation, function”. The purpose of translation is a particularly important concept in Skopos theory: the goal to be achieved in translation determines the whole process of translation, which means that the result determines the way. However, the activity of translation can have multiple purposes, and these purposes of translation are further classified into three categories.

The first kind of purpose, that the activity of translation involves, means the basic purpose of the translators (Translators translate something for earning money, recreation and so on.). The second kind of purpose, that the activity of translation involves, means the purpose of the translated works. For example, some translated works are used to spread knowledge. The last kind of purpose, that the activity of translation involves, that means that people use a particular way to achieve a particular purpose. For example, In order to explain the special features of grammatical structure of another language, a literal translation is used in the translated work.

However, generally speaking, “purpose” in Skopos theory means the purpose of the target text. That is, “the function of the target text to the target language readers in the socio-cultural context of the target language”. Therefore, in a target cultural, the specific purpose should be specified by the translator. In this case, the task of the translator is to choose appropriate ways to achieve the purpose of translation.

3.2 Trademark and its “purposes”

In order to study trademarks, we also need to pay attention to understanding the trademarks. Only by thoroughly understanding the trademark can research on trademark translation be effectively gained. Next, on the basis of previous studies, we will review the characteristics and purposes of the trademark again.

3.2.1 The characteristics of trademark

Trademark is the product of the development of commodity economy. It is a distinctive mark used by merchants to distinguish their commodities from other commodities. Trademarks can be composed of text and graphics alone, or they can be composed of both. A trademark word is the part of a trademark that can be read, such as words, letters, numbers, etc. This paper mainly discusses the translation of trademark words. In addition to the indicative meaning, linguistic meaning and pragmatic meaning contained in the general language sign, trademark word has its own characteristics. The author summarizes the following characteristics of successful trademark words:

The first feature is conspicuousness. This is the primary feature of a trademark, which makes the trademark unique and distinguishable from other products. For example, clothing cannot be registered with “clothes”, because it lacks distinctiveness.

The second characteristic is that the trademark names are usually easy to read and remember. Trademark words should be written more conspicuously and can give people a deep impression. Of course, it is also easy to remember and it has effects on marketing. For example, the trademark words M.A.C（魅可）, OMO（奥妙） and 7-up（七喜） are both visually and audibly impressive.

The third characteristic is that trademark words will give consumers a good association, which will stimulate consumers to buy goods. This indicates that the connotation and associative meaning of trademark words should be consistent with the national culture, customs and consumer needs of the target market. For example, when the English trademark Rejoice entered the Chinese market, it is translated into “飘柔”, which greatly satisfied the psychological needs of consumers when buying shampoos—making hair smooth and soft.

3.2.2 The “purposes” in trademark

The purpose of a trademark is reflected in the function of a trademark to some extent, so we will discuss the purpose of a trademark from the function of a trademark. He chuansheng believes that the functions of trademarks include stimulating consumption, identifying products, providing information about product, the symbol of reputation, legal protection and advertising. (He 34) From these six functions, it can be seen that the functions of the advertisement of the trademarks are relatively important—there are four functions about it. The reason is that the trademark is a particular advertisement with a special purpose. What’s more, its fundamental purposes are to attract attention, to give associations, to stimulate the desire, and finally to purchase the goods. Therefore, the fundamental purpose of the original trademark should be retained in the translation of the trademark—to attract the attention of consumers in the target-market, to give them good associations, to stimulate their desires of shopping, and finally to purchase the goods.

3.3 The convergence of Skopos theory and trademark translation

By comparing the purpose of Skopos theory with the purpose of trademark words, we can find the similarities and differences between them. The basic purpose, which the original trademark has, is the same with the purpose of translated trademark—promotion; In Skopos theory, the purpose of the original may not be consistent with the translation, and the purpose of translation should be the center. But beyond that, the purpose of trademark translation has many similarities with Skopos theory. The most significant point is that the methods are decided by the purpose, which will be further analyzed below.

Trademark translation involves three aspects—trademark words, translator and consumers. Therefore, the purpose of trademark translation will be discussed from these three aspects.

From the definition and characteristics of trademark words, the objects, who the translation of trademark words are service for, are the receivers of the translation—the customers. Therefore, the translation of trademark words should also have the characteristics of trademark words, and conform to the goal of trademark words. In other words, the translation of trademark words also belongs to the part of trademark words. According to the study of Newmark, the purpose of translation includes the purpose of the text and the purpose of the translator. Newmark considers that the purpose of the text reflects the attitude of the author to the subject of the original text. Therefore, the purpose of text of the trademark word refers to the connotation and purpose of the trademark word in the source language. The objects, who the translation of trademark words are service for, are the receivers of the translation—the customers, so translator should be aimed to make the customer accept the trademarks and attract the customer. Only in this way can they create economic benefits. The purpose of customers (the receivers of trademarks) is to get information from the translation of trademark words and choose whether to buy the goods according to the information, which is consistent with the purpose of trademark words—to provide product information, to attract consumers’ interest and to stimulate consumers’ desires of shopping.

In short, the goal of the translation determines its translation activity. In other words, the purpose determines the means. Therefore, when the translators translate trademark words, the purposes of trademark words determine the translators’ means of translation. Therefore, in the purpose of the activities of trademark translation, the purposes of trademark word are primary and the translators’ purposes are secondary.

“Purposes” in Skopos theory refer to the purpose served by translation. At this time, the translator is guided by the expected purpose of the translated work and chooses appropriate methods of translation to achieve this purpose. However, the function of the translation must also cohere with the intention of the original.

Therefore, it can be seen that the translation of a trademark is the activity of translation for the purpose of making consumers accept and buy the goods, which is consistent with Skopos theory. Therefore, Skopos theory plays an important role in trademark translation, and the characteristics of trademarks, the purpose of trademark translation and Skopos theory should be combined when people study the trademark translation.

4. Trademark translation from the perspective of Skopos theory

The translation of trademark words is an important part of the publicity of commodities in the target-market, which is a purposeful cross-cultural behavior. The activity, that English trademark words are translated into Chinese trademark words, involves the differences of the language, culture, custom and consumer mind between different countries, which decide the complexity of the translation of trademark words. The translation of English trademark word is based on the re-creation of English activity; however, this is not a casual creative activity, and it needs some principles of trademark translation. On the basis of Zhu Yajun’s principle of relevance, and conciseness and other studies and according to the consistency of Skopos theory and the purposes of trademark translation, this paper proposes several principles and methods of trademark translation under the guidance of Skopos theory. (Zhu 117)

4.1 Translation principles

4.1.1 Recognizable principle

When English trademark words are translated into Chinese trademark words, the translation need conform to the characteristics of Chinese language culture, such as conforming to Chinese cultural habits in terms of sound, shape, meaning or certain associations, which can make their translations readily recognizable, or give consumers good associations.

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