模因论视角下对商业广告翻译的研究

Chapter OneIntroduction

1.1 Research Background

The world we are living in today is becoming more connected and integrated thanever both economically and culturally in the wake of the globalization. Advertising, asone of the most important promotional tools, plays a vital role in the publicity ofproducts and services for companies. And researches on advertising in China andabroad have been taking on for commercial and academic purposes. Despite the gapsbetween different cultures, therefore, advertising translation has become an irresistibletrend and has been probed into from various perspectives, among which equivalencetheory attaches the most attention.

Admittedly, equivalence theory indeed provides an insightful and effectivemethod for advertising translation study, especially Nida’s equivalence theory with itsfocus on the most natural and closest response from the target readers. However,equivalence theory is not without problem in that “the formal equivalence may existin theory, while dynamic equivalence more naturally has to do primarily with the textas a whole”(Chesterman, 1997, 9). Namely, equivalence is more preoccupied with thesemantic and textual sameness. Therefore, equivalence is virtually unattainable in thereal practice of advertising translation, and hence not a useful concept in translationtheory. The translation of an advertisement is a different case, whose ultimate goal isto capture the audience’s attention, forge into their minds and arouse their interest in aminimum span of time. A translated advertisement with the most faithful meaning andelegant wording but without the features in question cannot be called a successful translation. Under such circumstances, the author tries to bring the study ofadvertisement translation into a newly-emerged, interdisciplinary theory---memetics.

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1.2 Research Rationale

Through a thorough reflection on the previous study, the author finds that fewresearches on advertisement translation have been done from the perspective ofmemetics. The author tries to do his bit to contribute to the study of the field ofadvertisement translation under the guidance of memetic theory.

Meme comes from sociobiology, where Dawkins first introduced in his book TheSelfish Gene and explained why he wanted to coin such a term as meme. Humanbeings pass down from generation to generation by the heredity of genes; genes areselfish and desperate to enter and survive in the the physical body of the posterity,determining the biological layout of our world. Likewise, meme “would be parallel to“gene” to describe the evolution of cultural phenomena which are subject to the samekinds of Darwinian laws of natural selection as genes”(Chesterman, 1997). Taking anew perspective for cultural transmission, memetics has instantly become one of themost eye-catching theories though it is still in its infancy.

Advertisement is a specially evocative language with a clear purpose to make adeep impression on the target audiences. It is especially true when the advertisementis translated into another language in a brand new culture. Hence, the advertisementtranslation is naturally linked to the meme replication and transmission. Peoplenowadays are bombarded with all kinds of information, and the most effectiveadvertisement translation must derive from their established cognition as the exampleillustrated below,

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Chapter TwoLiterature Review

2.1 A General Overview of Advertisement

Advertisement has evolved as society has changed: it has had an effect on society andat the same time society has had an effect on advertisement. Advertisement, farbeyond a set of marketing promotions to sell products or services, has impinged onpeople’s eyes, ears, minds and feelings as a kind of worldview, lifestyle or valuesystem. A proper translation for advertisements, therefore, calls for knowledge andtechniques of translation and a deep understanding of advertisement as well. Thus,this section offers a general review of advertisement from the perspectives ofadvertising definition, functions, and the comparative study of advertising languagecharacteristics etc.

2.1.1 Definition of Advertisement

With regard to the definition of advertisement, it seems merely about creating amessage and sending it to someone, hoping they will react in a certain way. Thedefinition from Oxford Advanced Dictionary is to tell the public about a product or aservice in order to encourage people to buy or to use it. Much as it seems to be thecase, the definition of advertisement actually is much more complicated. The word“advertisement” we refers to, is usually business advertisements, employing variousmedia such as television, radios, newspaper, posters or window displays etc, to widelyand extensively publicize a product or a service. When observed from a widerperspective, advertisements not only identify with economic sector, but also involvesocial activities, daily life and ideology and many other aspects. This study focuses only on the translation of business advertisements.

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2.2 Linguistic Features of Advertisement

The promotional magic of an advertisement stems from a combination of factors:advertising language, image and sound etc, among which advertising language is themost powerful. As put by advertising master David Augwei: “Advertising is the life ofthe words”(Ligang, Libing, 2012, 35). It is estimated that 50-75 percent of theeffectiveness of an advertisement relies on advertising language. Bearing inestimableimportance, both Chinese and English advertising language should be carefully poredover prior to the translationpractice. Both Chinese and English advertising language,with the purpose of stimulating and provoking customers, bears special features suchas concise, creative, distinctive and cultural conformity. This part deals with thesimilarities and differences of Chinese and English Advertising language features.

2.2.1 Similarities of Chinese and English Advertisement Languages

Advertisements in Chinese and English are the quintessence of language andadvertisers deliberate every word, in the hopes that the words exploited can influencethe target consumers both linguistically and culturally. As mentioned before, Chineseand English advertising languages bear many similarities. Based on these similarities,advertisement translation is possible to obtain. Next, the similarities of Chinese andEnglish languages are to be illustrated respectively from lexical, syntactic andrhetorical perspectives.

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CHAPTER THREE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK....................20

3.1 An Overview of Memetics................ 20

3.1.1 Definition of Meme...............…20

3.1.2 Types of Meme....................…21

CHAPTER FOUR FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE: ADVERTISEMENTTRANSLATION PRACTICE.... 39

4.1 Concurrent Processes of Advertisement Translation and Meme Transmission......... 39

4.2 Different Modes of Advertising Memes Transmission ...................41

CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION...................59

5.1 Major Findings.............. 59

5.2 Limitations ..............60

Chapter FourAdvertisement Translation Practice

4.1 Concurrent Processes of Advertisement Translation and MemeTransmission

With respect to advertising translation, memes are also likened to parasites, whichhave to experience four phases to to complete their life cycle: transmission, decoding,infection and encoding. In the transmission phase, the meme is encoded in a vectorand this phase is also called the hereditary phase. In the decoding phase, the host triesto interpret the information of the meme by understanding and accepting the core idea.The third phase follows the decoding phase and goes on to the infection phase. Thelast step comes to the encoding phase and the meme has to replicate itself with newvectors over and over again.

In advertisement translation, first, the source text of the advertisement is thevector of the source advertising memeplex, containing the original author’s ideas andhis cultural information. This phase is the hereditary phase. Once the vector (thesource text) is exposed to the host (the translator), it comes to the second phase,decoding. The translator starts his work by reading the source text and meanwhile the advertising meme starts its assimilation stage. The translator correctly understands thesource text and the meme enters his brain and stays as long as possible. The retentionstage is finished. At the same time, the translator has become an active host of theadvertising memes in the text. Third, the translator encodes the memes with anotherlanguage as the new vector. And this completes the expression stage of the advertisingmemes. When the translated advertisement is put into the target marketplace, theadvertising meme begins the final stage: transmission. New vectors (such as television,newspaper, internet etc.) and new hosts (consumers) are found and the replication andtransmission of the advertising memes would go on and on in the target marketplace.The process can be illustrated by the following diagram:

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Chapter FiveConclusion

5.1 Major Findings

This thesis is based on the combination of memetics and advertisement translation.Advertisement translation has indeed been put much spotlight on in the academic field,memetics however, has not developed in full swing, much less is it used to solveadvertisement translation problems. The present study makes a tentative study to lookinto the memetic study of advertisement translation in hopes that a limitedcontribution could be made to the interdisciplinary study in the field of advertisementtranslation. Having pored over the memetics and translation of advertising language,the author summarizes the major findings as follows:

First, the mechanism of meme replicating and transmitting bears a natural link toevery single aspect of advertising language, which paves the way for the furthercombination of meme and advertisement. Memetics can be a suitable and effectivetheory to bridge the cultural gap between cultures during the advertisement translation

Second, the model of the relationship between the process of meme transmissionand the mental process of advertisement translation has been established based on thememe life cycle theory. The author finds that the process of advertisement translationis exactly analogous to the whole process of meme life cycle, from its birth,replicating, transmitting and rebirth. This model lays a foundation for the furtherstudy of combining memetics and advertisement translation.

Third, after building a close relationship between the two processes of memetransmission and advertisement translation, the author explores Chesterman’s translation memes. The five supermemes suggested by Chesterman are linked toadvertisement translation and four norm memes serve as the supermemes to instructadvertisement translation. Under the guidance of the norm memes, the author attainstwo kinds of advertisement translation strategies: corresponding translation andimitating translation from different meme transmission modes. Last, five differenttranslation methods come into being, namely, borrowing target memes, adaptingoriginal memes, grafting target memes, transplanting target memes and imitatingtarget memes. These translation methods are brought into practice and provedeffective in advertisement translation.

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