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摘 要

在跨文化商业活动中，广告翻译是沟通品牌与本土消费者的桥梁。广告翻译并不只是一种简单的语言转换，同时它也是一种商业性行为，承担着宣传推广商品、扩大商品销售量、拓展国际市场、树立品牌形象甚至宣传品牌文化的重任。前人对广告翻译的研究多停留在翻译策略等语言学层面，少有人把广告翻译和翻译理论系统相结合进行研究。本课题以目的论为指导，通过对所收集的化妆品品牌广告及其翻译版本的比较分析，归纳总结出两种文本语言与文化各自的特点和可行有效的翻译方法。

根据目的论，决定翻译的最主要因素是翻译的目的，翻译的目的决定了翻译的策略和方法。并且还要求译文遵循“语内连贯法则”和“语际连贯法则”，而“目的法则”则是最高法则。广告的目的是激起消费者购买欲望，促进产品的销售，而其对应的广告翻译的最终目的也是一样。原广告语言英语和目标语言中文都各自具有其鲜明的特征，并且两种文化之间也有很大的差异，这要求广告翻译工作者在传达产品本身信息的同时，还能够立足于目标语言文化，将原广告精髓和目标消费群体的独特群体特征、文化背景和语言习惯相结合，灵活使用翻译策略弥补语言和文化差异，创造出符合消费群体审美并且有吸引力的广告译本，进而达到刺激消费的最终目的。目的论可以为广告翻译提供一个可靠的理论指导。希望本文可以为以后国内的广告翻译研究提供一些有价值的启示和参考。

关键词：目的论；广告翻译；化妆品广告翻译；目的原则

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements i

English Abstract ii

Chinese Abstract iii

Chapter One Introduction 1

1.1 Background of the Study 1

1.2 Significance and Purpose of the Study 2

Chapter Two Literature Review 3

2.1 Theoretical Framework——Skopos Theory 3

2.1.1 Skopos rule 4

2.1.2 Intratextual and Intertextual Coherence 5

2.2 Previous Studies at Skopos Theory and Translation of Advertisement 7

Chapter Three Translation of Cosmetic Advertisement from the Perspective of Skopostheorie 9

3.1 An Analysis of Translation of Cosmetic Advertisement guided by Skopostheorie 9

3.1.1 Target receiver 9

3.1.2 Target culture and language 15

3.2 Translation strategy of Cosmetic Advertisement translation on the basis of Skopostheorie 18

3.2.1 Serving the Skopos 18

3.2.2 Serving the target consumer 18

3.2.3 Catering the Target Culture and Language 19

3.2.4 Being responsible for the consumer 20

Chapter Four Conclusion 21

4.1 Summary 21

4.2 Limitations of the Thesis and Suggestions for Further Study 21

References 22

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

In the past decades, there has been a sharp growth in the world’s economic globalization; more and more international brands are entering China. For these overseas brands, advertising is an essential bridge between the target consumers of their products and themselves. Accordingly, considering the gap in terms of culture and language, the advertising translation no doubt has the same significance as the advertisement. Advertising translation is not only to convey the fundamental information, but is also required to create a subtle blend of the essence of the original text into the target culture with flexible translation methodology and strategies, achieving the ultimate aim—stimulating consumption. However, for the huge difference between the cultures of different languages, the traditional translation theory may fail to apply in some advertising translation cases. Over-simplification might lead to a loss of the aesthetic feeling or deep meaning in the original text, and sometimes even mistranslations, causing confusion, ambiguity, or even misunderstanding. The advertising translators should flexibly apply all kinds of translation skills to make the translation vivid and interesting, realizing the goal of promoting consumption.

Skopostheorie is the theory that employs the notion of Skopos to conduct the translation, the core idea of which is that the prime principle dictating any translation process is the purpose (Skopos) of the whole translational action. Skopostheorie, put forward by Hans Vermeer on the basics of study from his teacher, Katharina Reiss, who proposed the embryonic form of the functionalist theory, is the most important theory in the functional school of translations studies. Skopostheorie holds that any translation action has its intentionality, and the target text and target readers are the key in the translation, which requires that the translators should consider the target culture during the translation process. According to Skopostheorie, cross-cultural communication is attached great importance to in the translation process.

1.2 Significance and Purpose of the Study

Compared with other texts, advertising is highly utilitarian and goal-directed; instead of providing information of the goods to be sold, advertising mainly serves to persuade the potential buyer to purchase its products, making a profit. This particular feature of advertising leads to the particularity of advertisement translation. In the cross-cultural commercial environment, advertising translation is the bridge between the foreign brands and local consumers. Advertising translation is more than a simple language switching act, but a commercial move, serving to publish and promote the products, expand the international market, establish the brand image and promote the brand culture, which requires advertising translators to get acquainted with the target culture and language conventions, and offer a highly expressive and persuasive translation, conforming to the target consumer’s aesthetic interest and psychology, thereby stimulating consumption.

In conclusion, both advertising and its translation are goal-directed; profit is their ultimate aim. For these reasons, this paper chooses Skopostheorie as the theoretical framework and guiding theory to the study of advertising translation, and selects the cosmetic advertisements as the research focus in order to make a more concrete analysis and conduct an in-depth exploration into specific cases, for the target consumers of cosmetic advertisements bear quite a lot features. Their clear preferences and demands are a determinant that they are very suitable to be the study material for researching advertising translation guided by Skopostheorie, for which characteristics of the target receivers are an important factor guiding the whole translation process. The majority of former studies in this field were mainly about translation methods used to solve difficult problems during the translation; few researchers studied the advertising translation guided by the Skopostheorie in a systematic way. This paper hopes to make a comparative analysis of the collected English cosmetic advertisements’ original versions and the translated versions in the light of Skopostheorie, and then summarizes respective features and finds out the effective translation strategy, providing an inspiring reference to the future related translation studies in this field.

Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Theoretical Framework——Skopos Theory

Skopostheorie, first making its appearance in the mid-to-late 1970s, was proposed by Hans Vermeer on the basics of the study from his teacher, Katharina Reiss, who is the founder of the Functionalist Translation theory. This theory regards translation as an intentional intercultural activity; it holds that all translation actions have their purposes, and it is the purposes that determine the overall translation process.

In 1971, Katharina Reiss, the famous German scholar and translation theorist, published her book about translation criticism, in which she stated that it was impossible to realize the complete equivalence in reality, for some translations had their own functions. She put forward the concept that “the functional perspective takes precedence over the normal standards of equivalence” (Nord, 2001: 9), and purposed that the ideal translation was the translation in which the aim of the target text is to be equivalent to the source-language text “in terms of the conceptual content, linguistic form and communicative function” (as cited in Nord, 2001). On the basis of Eugene Nida’s equivalence theory, Katharina Reiss developed a translation criticism model based on the functional relationship between target and source text, which set the rudiment of functional school of translations studies.

On the basis of Reiss’s study, Hans Vermeer went further in breaking through the limitations of the theory of equivalence, and set up the leading theory of functionalism—Skopostheorie, freeing the study of translation from the constraint of source-text-oriented approach. “Skopostheorie focuses above all on the purpose of the target text which determines the translation methods and strategies that are to be employed in order to produce a functionally adequate result.” (Munday, 2001: 79)

In Skopostheorie, in which the purpose of the translation plays a dominate role, the source text has a much lower status than in Reiss’s study and other equivalence-based theories; it is regarded as an “offer of information”, which is partly or completely switched into another “offer of information” (as cited in Nord, 2001) for the target addressee. Skopostheorie is a prominent theory in the functional school of translations studies.

Vermeer’s Skopostheorie is comprised of three important rules—Skopos rule, intratextual coherence and intertextual coherence.

2.1.1 Skopos rule

The word “Skopos” means “purpose” in Greek. In the Skopostheorie, the “Skopos rule” is the top-ranking rule of any translation, which means that the purpose (Skopos) is a determinant of the translation action; that is, “the end justifies the means” (as cited in Nord, 2001). Avoiding conceptual confusion, Nord’s book has explained a basic distinction between the two concepts. She stated that “intention” is a concept defined from the standpoint of the sender, who hopes to make the text meet a certain purpose. However, it cannot be guaranteed that every good intention will deliver an expected result, for the receivers and senders have been brought up in and have long been exposed to their indigeneous cultures and languages, which may be sharply different from each other; they could pick up completely different information from the same message. According to the model of text-bound interaction, the function with which in mind addressees have access to the text is determined by the addressees’ own expectations, needs, previous knowledge and situational conditions. Ideally, the intention of the sender will find its aim, and then the intention would be similar to or even identical with the function (Nord, 2001: 28).

However, as a general rule, Vermeer considers the teleological concepts “aim”, “purpose”, “intention” and “function” to be equivalent, subsuming them under the generic concept of “Skopos” (Nord, 2001: 29), and he explains the Skopos rule as the following:

Each text is produced for a given purpose and should serve this purpose. The Skopos rule thus reads as follows: translate/interpret/speak/ write in a way that enables your text/translation to function in the situation in which it is used and with the people who want to use it and precisely in the way they want it to function (as cited in Nord, 2001).

Nord (2001) has pointed out that it does not mean that a good translation should completely conform to or adapt to target-culture behavior or expectations, excluding philological or literal or even word-for-word translations. Whether a particular translation should be “free” or “faithful” is dependent on its own specific purpose. It can be noted that Skopostheorie does not give any specific description about what the principle, the guide of the translation, is, beacause the principle of any translation must be decided respectively in its own particular case. Translation is normally guided “by assignment” (Nord, 2001: 30), which is also called “translation commission”, “translation instructions” or “translation brief”, specifying what kind of translation it should be. The detailed information as “purpose, addressees, time, place, occasion and medium of the intended communication and the function the text is intended to have” (Nord, 2001: 30), would form a specific translation brief. In an ideal situation, a client would offer an explicit brief, but the truth is that most of clients fail to provide the translators with good translation briefs. Thus the responsibility is transfered to translators, which requires the translators to be able to understand the Skopos from the translational situation (Nord, 2001: 31).

2.1.2 Intratextual and Intertextual Coherence

It is clear that in Skopostheorie, the translation brief is determined by the target culture’s circumstances, instead of the situation of source culture. As Nord (2001) noted, “A text is made meaningful by its receiver and for its receiver.” The same linguistic material offered by a text would be interpreted into different messages by diverse addressees or even the same addressee at different times. Vermeer summarizes this by proposing that any text, whether it is a source text or a target one, is just an “offer of information” (as cited in Nord, 2001), where each addressee finds the items that are interesting or have importance to them. If this concept is applied to translation, it could be said that “a target text is an offer of information formulated by a translator in a target culture and language about an offer of information formulated by someone else in the source culture and language” (as cited in Nord, 2001). Nord has explained the concept as the following:

Guided by the translation brief, the translator selects certain items from the source-language offer of information (originally meant for source-culture addressees) and processes them in order to form a new offer of information in the target language, from which the target-culture addressees can in turn select what they consider to be meaningful in their own situation. In these terms, the translation process is irreversible (as cited in Nord, 2001).

Therefore, it requires the translators to produce a text which could make sense to target-culture addressees. In Skopostheorie, Vermeer states that the target text should “conform to the standard to intratextual coherence” (as cited in Nord, 2001). This is another significant component of Skopostheorie, the coherence rule. Vermeer has specified this by saying that “a translation should be acceptable in a sense that it is coherent with the receivers’ situation” (as cited in Nord, 2001), which means that the text should make sense in the target communicative culture and situation where it is received; in other words, the target receiver can understand it as being sufficiently coherent with their situation (Nord, 2001: 32).

Another rule of Skopostheorie is “fidelity rule” (as cited in Nord, 2001), which is also often known as “intertextual coherence”. As the translated text is an offer of information from a preceding given offer of information, the translation is “expected to bear some kind of relationship with the corresponding source text” (as cited in Nord, 2001). However, the intertextual coherence is subordinate to intratextual coherence; and as the Skopos rule is the top-ranking rule, both are “subordinate to the Skopos” (Nord, 2001: 33). The intertextual coherence exists between the source and translated text, while the extent of it depends on the translation Skopos and the translator’s own interpretation of the source text. Nord has stated this concept as the following:

If the Skopos requires a change of function, the standard will no longer be intertextual coherence with the source text but adequacy or appropriateness with regard to the Skopos. And if the Skopos demands intratextual incoherence (as in the theatre of the absurd), the standard of intratextual coherence is no longer valid.

2.2 Previous Studies at Skopos Theory and Translation of Advertisement

Since the birth of functionalist Skopostheorie, it has attracted wide attention. Munday (2001) suggests that Skopostheorie allows the same text being translated in different ways according to the Skopos of the target text. Shuttleworth and Cowie (2004) has included the Skopos theory and related concepts. There is a great deal of introductory literature on the theory, among which, the Translating as a Purposeful Activity: Functional Approaches Explained (2001) by Christiane Nord is one of the most representative and influential book . It systematically introduces the functional school of translations studies in English for the first time.

Since the introduction of Skopos Theory into China, Skopos Theory has been widely accepted in its academic realm. Skopostheorie has been applied in various fields, and countless related articles have come out. Compared with other fields, Skopostheorie is predominantly applied in the translation of non-literary works, practical writing like subtitles, instructions, public signs, commercial texts and so on.

The ultimate purpose of advertising is to make profits, so accordingly, the purpose of advertising translation is not for academic research but for the pursuit of commercial interests, which just fits in with the central idea of Skopostheorie, according to which the purpose (Skopos) of the translation action is the prime principle of the whole translation process (Jiang and Li, 2015). Skopostheorie has opened up a new perspective to the study of advertising translation, providing a theoretical basis for advertising translation practice (Sun and Yu, 2007). Many researchers realize that the advertising translation needs to adapt to the target culture. Nie (2013) has pointed out that English and Chinese cultures have a lot of differences; the advertising translation should cater to the target language, the psychology of the target receivers and respect the religion. Zang (2018) purposes that translated advertisements should conform to the public’s aesthetic taste and follow the linguistic features of target languge. Xu (2018) suggests that aesthetics should be involved in advertising translation, which can help to attract the attention of the consuming public. There are an increasing number of studies starting to combine advertising translation with Skopostheorie, however, most of these articles focus on enumeration and induction of the translation methods and skills (Zhang, 2009; Ma amp; Jiang, 2013; Zhong, 2014; Wang, 2018); there are few researches studying the advertising translation with the Skopostheorie in a systematic way.

Chapter Three

Translation of Cosmetic Advertisement from the Perspective of Skopostheorie

3.1 An Analysis of Translation of Cosmetic Advertisement with Skopostheorie

Cosmetic advertisements are commercial advertisements, which are expected to to promote sales and make profits. Compared with literary translation, the translation of commercial advertisements allow the translator to play a more creative role during the translation operation in order to achieve the final goal of advertisements — promoting the sales, expanding the international market, establishing the brand image and even promoting the brand culture.

According to Skopostheorie, the target addressee is the most important factor determining the process of translation. For the translation of cosmetic advertisements, the target receivers are relatively characteristic. The problem needing the translators to solve is how to make the translation achieve the intended purpose. Before discussing the translation of cosmetic advertisements, it is necessary to make clear the features of the target receivers and the target culture and language in order to know how to render the produced text effective. Many examples in this chapter come from famosous cosmetic brands, which is more representative to help to explore the problem.

3.1.1 Target receiver

The target receiver of the cosmetic advertisements translation is also the potential consumer of the cosmetic; the majority of the consuming public are female. Women often think in an emotional way, and their consumption behavior is often emotional as well. For women, they value the emotional factors more than the functional value of the product, which is in sharp contract with men, who pay more attention to the practical functions of goods. Women are willing to spend money for psychological satisfaction, personal realization, and spiritual pleasure, so a successful translation should conform to women’s preferences.

3.1.1.1 Preference for feminine words

In Chinese, characters have a great deal of meaning, and sometimes a character can produce rich associations in the readers. For instance, some characters with the radical of “女” conjures up something beautiful; the characters with the radical of “艹” or “木” tend to let people think of flowers; the characters representative of feminine elements like water, silk, cosmetics and flowers are also usually associated with females and beauty. All of these are often applied into the translation of cosmetic advertisements, and especially the cosmetic brand name.

Take a famous cosmetic brand Estee Lauder as an example. Estee Lauder is the name of the founder of the brand. As a name, Estee Lauder actually has another translation known as “埃斯泰·劳德”; however, in China, the translated version “雅诗兰黛” seems to be more widely accepted. There are few Chinese women considering Estee Lauder as a name of a person, but a nice brand name, which is an obviously female cosmetic brand name, for the four characters of the brand name all evoke the femininity of a woman. “雅” means elegance, and “诗” means poem, which is possibly connected with the intellectual. “兰” and “黛” respectively represent the orchid, a flower, and an ancient female cosmetic. Thus the translation “雅诗兰黛” leads the receivers to think of an image of an elegant, beautiful and educated woman, who might also be considerably wealthy, as elegance and education usually come with a rich family in people's minds. To further illustrate, there is another typical instance. JURLIQUE is an Australian pure natural skin care brand. The brand name JURLIQUE is abbreviated from the names of Jurgen Klein and Ulrike Knew, who are a couple and the founder of this company. It has a beautiful Chinese name “茱莉蔻”, all the three characters of which are representative of plants and flowers. It is well known that flower is a typical metaphor of female, which caters to women's aesthetic interest, and the association of plants also impresses people that their products are all purely natural and healthy.

The aforementioned instances are transliterations of naming. If they may vaguely indicate the initiative and creativity of the translators, there is another better example. Clinique is an American cosmetic brand, the name of which means “clinic” in French. While the founder of the brand, Carol Phillips and Estee Lauder were troubling with naming the new brand, they passed by a clinic in a German town, and attracted by the striking sign of the clinic named Clinique, which is in green and white. Thus they bought this name and took it as their new brand’s name. In China, Clinique is translated as “倩碧”. The translator chose to give up the original meaning, clinic, for this is a little far away from the cosmetics and has no aesthetic feeling. By contrast, for the translation “倩碧”, the character “倩” means beauty, and “碧” is a type of green jade. “倩碧” leads the addressees to think of something “beautiful and healthy”, while the green color is usually combined with the healthy, fresh, vigorous and new life.

3.1.1.2 Preference for nature

It is widely reported that the pure natural cosmetics are more healthy and better for the skin than the chemical ingredients, which may cause allergic reactions, leading to more serious damage to the skin instead of nourishing it. It is hard to say this concept is completely true, but it has truly influenced a number of women’s selection of cosmetics purchase. Hence, some translators intentionally obscure the part of chemical ingredients and the like in the source text, and emphasize the pure natural raw materials of the products, in order to meet the growing demands of the market. The advertising translation of Fresh can be a good illustration.

Example 1. The Story of Rose

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