The Purpose Of Advertisement And Translation

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Outline

Thesis Statement: This paper explores the advertisement translation and how can we translate the advertisement from the perspective of functionalism.

Abstract 1

2．Literature review 5

3. Advertisement Translation from the Perspective of Functionalism 9

4．Conclusion 21

Bibilography 23

Abstract

The purpose of advertising is to persuade the public to purchase a product or service, so is the purpose of advertisement translation. The functional translation theory has been regarded as the key theory guiding advertisement translation. In recent years, the translation activities in western translation theory field also thrive. Based on different ways and methods in translation studies, there have been a number of schools, such as the translation of the linguistic school of advertisement translation，the translation of study school, the translation of culture school, the translation of functionalist school, the translation of multivariate system school etc. And the translation of advertisement has the closest relation with functional translation theory. As translation is the transformation involving language and non language symbol. The translation process should be controlled by the dominant function, or controlled by the text "Skopos" (objective function). As a result, the functional translation theory has profound influence and significance on advertising translation.

After some research on many domestic and foreign translation theories, the author find that the traditional linguistic theory cannot meet the need of advertisement translation. After studying a dozen of German functional translation theory, the author find that objective law in the functional translation theory has great influence on advertising translation. As a result, the author wants to research the method and matters needing attention during the process of advertisement translation, which is based on the functional translation theory and "Skopos" rule.

KEY WORD：Functional translation theory, advertisement translation, methods of translation

1．Introduction

"Translation is a mode of information transmission. It uses B language to express a language’s message, which can make the people who do not know A language obtain the same information." (Jin Ti, 1998:24) Therefore, translation is a language activity that should be faithful to the original text and should also take the reader into account. Advertising is a form of communication intending to persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to purchase or take some action upon products, ideas, or services. As a special aspect of language translation activity, advertising translation is worth everybody’s study. According to the characteristics of advertising language and based on "Skopos theory", we will discuss the Chinese-English translation of advertising language in the late paragraph.

Firstly, I’d like to talk something about functional translation theory and advertising translation. Based on "aim-oriented", functional group got rid of the constraint of equivalence theory and put translation in the framework of behavior theory and intercultural communication theory.

However, little information has been focused on translation methods and principles. The standard of traditional translation is faithfulness and equivalence, which obviously cannot meet the tactics of commercial advertisement translation. "Skopos theory" treats translation as purposeful communicative behavior and put the function of original text in the primary position in the translation, which supplies a theoretical basis for commercial advertising and make translators use translations more flexible. Thus, such a theory has breathed life into advertisement translation. Previous researches have failed to consider the flexibility of advertising translation. Most of translators pay much attention to the original text and ignore the function of translation. These previous results are inconclusive, misleading and controversial. Functionalist approaches believe that translation is a communicative interaction; the translation purpose justifies the translation process, namely, "the end justifies the means", and the translation purpose determines the translation strategies to be adopted. This thesis will try to give an overall analysis about the characteristics of English advertisements and discuss some problems existing in advertisement translation. Then the author likes to list various means of English advertisements translation and talk about the application of translation skills. I also suggest some more pragmatic advertising translation principles----function socialist principles. This principles mainly serves the purpose of practice, which just reflects the originally function of translation theories. According to function socialist principles, if a translation can achieve the expectation of the adviser, then it is a good translation. With the development and maturity of advertising in the 21st century, the characteristics of Advertising English is also coming out in the wash, so we can have some rules to follow on our translation.

The thesis is divided into four parts. Part 1 is the introduction, which points out the background, theoretical framework of the research, research method and the organization of the thesis. Part 2 is the literature review of advertising translation and the relevant literature of functionalist translation theory. Part 3 constructs the theoretical framework of this research by illustrating functionalist translation theory and advertisement translation from the perspective of functionalism, such as the purpose of advertisement and translation and translation methods and principles. Part 4 is the conclusion which demonstrates that functionalist translation theory is applicable to commercial advertising translation between Chinese and English and mainly summarizes the major findings based on the analysis and discussion given in previous chapters. In the conclusion part, the author also points out the limitation of the present research as well as some suggestions for the future study.

2．Literature review

In this part, the author will first review previous studies on the English translation of Chinese advertisement, and then identify some problems in the translation practice.

Advertising is a form of communication used to encourage or persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to continue or take some new action. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common. The purpose of advertising may also be reassuring employees or shareholders that a company is viable or successful. Advertising messages are usually paid for by sponsors and are viewed via various traditional media; including mass media such as newspaper, magazines, television commercial, radio advertisement, outdoor advertising or direct mail; or new media such as blogs and websites and text messages.

Different kinds of texts have different purposes and functions, therefore different translation principles and strategies need to be taken in the process of translation. Germany function translation theorist Hans j. Vermeer pointed out that translation methods and translation strategy must be decided by the purposes and functions of the original text. According to the functionalist approaches to translation, translation strategies and methods are determined by the purpose and the intended functions of the target text. Therefore, in order to discuss the basic strategies of advertising translation, we must first understand the definition of advertising and its main functions and objectives.

Advertising is a marketing tool that helps to sell branches of products and helps to build confidence in companies and institutions by conveying accurate and compelling information to consumers about the brand or company and institution. From the definition of advertising we have mentioned, we know advertising is a type of mass communication between certain sponsors and a certain target audience. It provides information of products to consumers with an aim to persuade them to take action to buy the products or the services. Advertising messages are usually paid for by sponsors and viewed via various traditional media; including mass media such as newspaper, magazines, television commercial, radio advertisement, outdoor advertising or direct mail; or new media such as websites and text messages. The characteristics what the advertisement has will be illustrated in the following paragraph.

First, it is non-personal (e.g. a form of mass communication). The information is provided to a certain group of people instead of specific ones. Therefore, it is non-personal. Second, it is a presentation of information about goods, services of ideas. Advertising not only promotes tangible goods, but also helps publicize the intangible services. And increasingly, advertising is used to selling goods following principles, like economic, political, religious and social ideas. Third, it is by means of various media. Newspapers, magazines, radio, television, World Wide Web etc. are all used to make advertising reach us. Forth, it is intended to be persuasive. Most advertising bears this character to manipulate consumers to buy the products and accept the ideas, values, and lifestyle that are associated with the products. Fifth, it is to promote sales and to make profits. Advertising is an effective way for traders and businessmen to communicate information about their goods, services or ideas to the consumers. It cares about attracting the purchasers’ interest.

By the definition of advertising, we know that the purpose of advertising is to play a role as one kind of medium, therefore, consumers would buy some products after experiencing facial features. Or it can promote an organization to be widely advertised. Naturally, the ads features and function also are ready to come out. Commercial advertisers often seek a way to generate increased consumption of their products or services through "Branding," which involves the repetition of an image or product name in an effort to associate certain qualities with the brand in the minds of consumers. 

Functional Equivalence Theory put forward by Nida is different from most of the early theories that focus on the verbal comparison between the SL and TL. Nida attempts to offer a new way to produce an equivalent, taking the relationship of the receptor to the text into account. It is believed that "the relationship of the target language receptors to the target language text should be roughly equivalent to the relationship between the original receptors and the original text." (Nida, 1993, p.112) The basic ideas of Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory lie in the following three aspects.

Culture and intercultural competence and awareness that rise out of experience of culture, are far more complex phenomena than it may seem to the translator. The more a translator is aware of complexities of differences between cultures, the better a translator s/he will be. It is probably right to say that there has never been a time when the community of translators was unaware of cultural differences and their significance for translation. Translation theorists have been cognizant of the problems attendant upon cultural knowledge and cultural differences at least since ancient Rome. Cultural knowledge and cultural differences have been a major focus of translator training and translation theory for as long as either has been in existence. The main concern has traditionally been with words and phrases that are so heavily and exclusively grounded in one culture that they are almost impossible to translate into the terms – verbal or otherwise – of another. Long debate have been held over when to paraphrase, when to use the nearest local equivalent, when to coin a new word by translating literally, and when to transcribe. All these "untranslatable" cultural-bound words and phrases continued to fascinate translators and translation theorists.

The "Skopos theory" (German: Skopos Theory) is a concept from the field of translation studies. It was established by the German linguist Hans Vermeer and comprises the idea that translating and interpreting should primarily take into account the function of both the source and target text.

"Skopos theory" focuses on translation as an activity with an aim or purpose, and on the intended addressee or audience of the translation. To translate means to produce a target text in a target setting for a target purpose and target addressees in target circumstances. In "skopos theory", the status of the source text is lower than it is in equivalence-based theories of translation. The source is an "offer of information", which the translator turns into an "offer of information" for the target audience.

Paul Kussmaul writes about this theory: "the functional approach has a great affinity with "Skopos" theory. The function of a translation is dependent on the knowledge, expectations, values and norms of the target readers, who are again influenced by the situation they are in and by the culture. These factors determine whether the function of the source text or passages in the source text can be preserved or have to be modified or even changed.

3. Advertisement Translation from the Perspective of Functionalism

3.1 The purpose of advertisement and Translation

The main function of commercial advertising is to disseminate a product’s information that can guide and stimulate consumer’s behavior and buying desire, which can lead to the increasing of product sales. Therefore, advertising translation should be "accurate" in order to achieve business functions. Accurate translation should be regarded as the soul of advertising translation. If the translation of human speech misrepresented the source language of advertising messages, advertising will inevitably lead to erroneous results. This information might mislead consumers, which can also give an adverse impact on business reputation, or even irreparable significant economic losses. Therefore, when translating a brand slogan, we must survey the basic information of the product and the background firstly and must not simply translate at our will.

There is embodiment of main concepts of functionalist approaches in advertising translation. When a company tries to sell its product or service in other nation or nations, international advertising is involved. International advertising always functions as a pioneer paving the way for a company and its products to enter another culture. Then, advertising translation is involved.

In order to translate advertising properly, there should be a theory to guide it. Functionalist approaches are just such a theory. Firstly, functionalist approaches have an orientation towards cultural rather than linguistic transfer. Secondly, this theory views translation, not as a process of trans-coding, but as an act of communication. Thirdly, it is oriented towards the function of the target text (prospective translation) rather than prescriptions of the source text (retrospective translation). Fourthly, it views the text as an integral part of the world and not as an isolated specimen of language. (Snell-Hornby1995:43).

The basic concepts of functionalist approaches are still suitable for advertising translation. We communicate not only through verbal language but also via non-verbal language. As a mass communication, ad translation covers all forms of intercultural transfer, verbal and non-verbal. That is why Manttari prefers to speak of "message transmitters" which consist of textual material combined with other media such as picture, sounds and body movements. "The purpose of translational action is to transfer messages across culture and language barriers by means of message transmitters produced by experts. Translators are experts in producing appropriate message transmitters in intercultural or trans-cultural communication."(Nord2001:13).

In advertising, an advertiser sometimes depends on translator’s professional opinion on the target culture to design or revise the advertisement. Such kind of translational action as a translator’s action was excluded out of the study of traditional translation. Functionalists, however, bring it into translation study, and thus further confirm the role and the status of translators in a world characterized by the division of labor.

According to the theory of functionalism, the prime principle determining any translation process is the purpose (Skopos) of the overall translational action. (Nord1997:27) Thus, translator should be entitled to the right and freedom when he chooses whatever strategies he thinks are appropriate to achieve the Skopos of the translation. A translator is regarded as an expert by functionalists. Let’s see the following example:

A) To the past is black and white. But the future is always color. If we translate the sentence literally, it seems people will relate it with the development of Chinese home appliances. "Black and White" would be very likely to think of black and white TV and "color" means "color TV". In fact, this is the Hennessy liquor advertisement, Chinese translation is: "对我而言，过去平淡无奇；而未来，却是绚烂缤纷".

B) We lead. Others copy. For example, this sentence literally translation is "我们领导，他人抄写/抄袭", and it would be certain lead to a misleading and such a translation is so absurd. Actually, this is the slogan refers to Ricoh’s advanced technology, so the translation should be "我们领先，他人仿效."

C) Hi-fi, hi-fashion, only from Sony, we must first understand the "Sony" itself before translating it. If you know that Sony is a well-known enterprise which produces sound, home appliances and other products, so the general direction of the wrong translation would be accurate. In addition, the translation should try to figure out the sentence of the words repeated, because the designers of the pursuit of advertising effects, and sometimes they will use various means of advertisement design, such as analog coinage, etc., which can make a feeling of different and impressive. "hi" is "high" in abbreviated form and "fi" means "fidelity" in the sentence. From this we conclude it is an ad about audio equipment. Chinese translation is "高度保真，高级趣味，高尚名流，来自索尼."

Through analysis above, we can come to a conclusion that ads translation should be faithful to the original and take into account of concise and vivid images. But the culture factors should also be considered. Advertising language aims at sales purchasing and promoting a concept of life and values, which are subject to specific cultural constraints. Because slogans come from different cultural backgrounds, the translated version must be considered as advertisement’s specific cultural environment objects and their culture must meet the consumer’s psychology.

At this point, some translation of foreign goods entered China’s market are good examples. Car brand Mercedes Benz translated as "奔驰", borrows the Chinese proverb, "奔腾不息，驰骋万里." It takes good advantage of Chinese language and culture to meet the nature, giving the impression that the car performances good and becomes a well-known brand. Conversely, if it did not pay attention to cultural factors, it will give a negative impact on commodity sales. Shanghai had exported a "白翎" pen, its English translation called "White Feather". Its sales were very poor, because white feather symbols coward in English language. Therefore, the word-for-word translation can’t meet the western consumers’ psychological need, so such translation cannot win the market. The diversity of cultural factors restricts the accuracy, reasonableness and success of advertising translation.

First, the factor of the mode of thinking between the Chinese and the westerns is very important. If you cannot grasp the differences between those modes of thinking, it could lead to confusion or even convey wrong information to consumers. For example, "绿茶", when translated into English, it becomes green tea. While "红茶" turns into "black tea." It is because Chinese people named the tea according to the water color they become while the English name the tea according to their original color. As "红糖" was translated into "brown sugar" seemed to be reasonable.

Second, the factor of cultural values and psychology is of equal importance. The main difference between Chinese and western is whether individual’s position and ideas are valued or not. The western people advocates individualism while Chinese people pay more attention to collectivism and ethics. When Hong Kong television translated American slogan "just do it!" into "想做就做", which was advertised for individual freedom in the United States, but as the Chinese community in Hong Kong, people have a tradition of self-realized. As a result, many consumers think the ads are suspected of inducing young people to do bad things. Therefore, the translation was changed into "做该做的事".

Third, social factors in the historical background and social customs should also be considered. When Toyota enter the Chinese market at the beginning, the slogan was "car to Piedmont Road, a road must be Toyota." It would be understood well in the United States, for the people whoever knows American history knowing "Declaration of Independence. The first sentence is "All men are created equal ". Today’s advertising phrase translated not only shocking, but also showing. Toyota car quality is better, and it would occupy the car market sooner or later.

3.2 Translation Methods and Principles

Advertisement is a strong weapon in business battles. Advertisement English is a special type of English that differentiates from normal English. It focuses on the use of vocabulary, the structure of sentences and rhetoric. Advertisement English is a kind language of which has its own different language style and the characteristics. This paper encompasses several real examples and an analysis the major characteristic of advertisement English and the strategies when translating into Chinese.

The Advertisement text is a kind of practical one which has two basic functions: informational function and persuasive function. Comparatively, the persuasive function is the fundamental one because the ultimate goal of advertisement is to persuade consumers or the public to accept a product, service or concept. Consequently, an advertisement is a failure if it is unable to persuade consumers to purchase. Similarly, in the process of translating advertisements, the translation would be a failure if it didn’t serve the purpose. Therefore, the researches on advertising translation should be an integration of translation theories and the special purpose and function of advertisements. (Snell-Hornby1995:43)

3.2.1 Transliteration

Among all the translation of English advertisements, there are many translation based on the pronunciation of the word, such as McDonald---麦当劳, Spirit---雪碧, Samsung---三星, Whisky ---威士忌etc. Although these words are the name of the commodity, they really have a considerable effect of advertising. They can be called advertising, because such translation is simple and lively. What’s more, the translations also achieve functional equivalence imperceptibly and reach the original purposes of advertising. For another example: Poison (百爱神), "Poison" is "毒药". In the Western mind, this is a new, fresh and exciting commodity name. As company do such propaganda in their commodity promotion: This kind of perfume is very noble that lady will be even more charming and beautiful with using it and win more men’s crazy pursuit. As a result, the woman would be a "disaster". When western people see such propaganda, they could not help thinking of The Troy War which was caused by Troy’s peerless beauty Helen in Greek mythology and even to think of famous tragedy "Romeo and Juliet" that Juliet was poisoned in order to pursuit love in the chillingly beautiful end of this story. This propaganda has greatly stimulated the female audience’s curiosity and has achieved great success. But the trademark translators realize that the word of "poison" does not have this kind of special meaning in the Chinese culture and it cannot arouse the audience corresponding in this imagination. Just according to a literal translation would not meet the need of advertisement, so there choose "百爱神" which can be accepted by Chinese audience according to the trademark’s pronunciation. In this way, it will realize the principle of economic so as to achieve the purpose of advertising. In turn, if the "safeguard" translated as "安全卫士 ", then it doesn’t use words in economy and we can imagine the effect of advertising. Transliteration with auditory beauty can contribute to realize the value of advertising.

3.2.2 Literal Translation

Literal translation here means the verbal and non-verbal elements of the original text are directly transferred to the target text without adjustment or adaptation. It is source text-centered. It can be called straight translation. The features of the source text in terms of meaning and style are carefully preserved. The basic principle is that the original text is the only source of material that a translator can work on and no addition and abridgement of the content is permitted.

Literal translation is usually applied to promote products such as technical goods and office equipment. In these cases, the texts tend to be "universal". The factual statements, statistics, and evidence used in these ads are often written in ordinary language with common words, normal collations, and standard technical terms. No cultural words are found in them or the cultural differences are very small and just factual information about the product needs to be acknowledged. Let’s see the following examples:

To kill two birds with one stone"

"一石两鸟"；"一箭双雕"。

Late is better than the late.

"迟到总比丧命好"

Hand in Hand, Future in Your Hand

伴你同行·齐握未来(太平人寿）

There are many cases like this. But most advertisements are not just the linguistic operation, they include the cultural elements. Direct strategy cannot express the purpose of the advertising entirely. Then, adaptive translation is needed.

3.2.3 Free Translation

As Su Shu Hui(1996) put forth : "Due to the cultural and linguistic differences between languages, a successful advertisement in one nation doesn’t guarantee its success in another nation. If translated word-by-word without any adjustment, the translation is very likely to fail to perform its function...adjustments are permitted…"

Adaptive translation means adaptations or adjustments of the source text are made to conform to the target linguistic and cultural norms and conventions. It is one of the effective strategies to fulfill the intended function in advertisement translation. It takes the audience orientations and cultural norms and conventions into consideration. Two ways of adaptation to English advertising languages and cultures are illustrated below.

Adaptation to the Linguistic Features of English Advertising

English advertising has its own linguistic features. The first feature is at linguistic level. We know that the function and purpose of translation are selling the products and offering services for the company. In order to achieve this goal, translation needs to be accepted by the target language readership. Therefore, the translation should conform to the linguistic features of advertising English at first. There are some examples to illustrate this point. The sentences which are in very high frequency in advertising English are imperative, interrogative, elliptical and conditional sentences. When translating Chinese advertisement into English, these kinds of sentence can be chosen to use. Look at this example:

喝一杯即饮柠檬茶令你怡神醒脑!

A Glass of Instant Lemon Tea Makes You Refreshing.

The Chinese version is an exclamatory sentence. The English one is changed into a declarative sentence. Its effect is not as good as the original one. Furthermore, there is a grammatical mistake in the translated version: the use of word "refreshing". If it employs elliptical interrogative sentence and exclamatory sentence to express the idea, it will be more effective. By applying interrogative and exclamatory sentences, the advertising can arouse curiosity and stimulate interest. It can serve for the purpose of advertising actively. Therefore, it is better to be translated into:

Just for refreshment?

A Glass of Instant Lemon Tea! (刘法公19994:3)

On the whole, English advertising has some obvious linguistic features. When the cultural difference between the Chinese advertising and the English advertising is not very big, the linguistic differences are the primary problem to be considered. If the translation is consistent with English linguistic features, it is easier to be accepted by English audience.

2) Adaptation to the English readership’s Cultural Conventions

Advertising translation not only deals with language, but also the culture. The consciousness of cultural differences is very important. The culture here consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and to do so in any role that they accept for anyone of themselves (Good enough 1957:167). By referring to the definition of ‘culture’, it can be found that the success of English translations of Chinese advertisements in the western market mainly depends on the acceptable language-expressing manner. Many culture elements have to be considered when translating, such as English audience’s worldviews, values, habits and customs etc. Here is an example to explain this point.

让WIC妇孺计划帮助你.

Let WIC works for you.

The verb "帮助" is replaced by "work for" due to people’s orientation caused by different culture. In China, people think highly of the help among people, while in the West, the individual sprits are highlighted. They pursue individual initiatives and achievement. This adaptation makes the meaning of the English translation more tangible and concrete. That is, by working for you, we help you out of your trouble.

In Chinese advertisements, there are some cultural elements which belong to Chinese uniquely. When translated these advertisements into English, some cultural background must be explained in order not to make English audience confusing. Therefore, some extra information has to be compensated to strengthen the impact of the advertising. One typical example can illustrate it.

何以解忧，唯有杜康。

Nothing but "Du Kang Liquid" can mitigate sorrows.

---From Practical Advertising English

The Chinese advertisement is quoted from a famous ancient poem and it is very familiar with Chinese consumers as slogan of "Du Kang Liquid" in the 1990s. The English translation can result in the confusing and misleading if translating it word by word without the historical and cultural context. Therefore, it is necessary to add some extra information to make the English audience more clear about it. It can be written like this: Eight hundred years ago, a famous poet of China wrote in his poem "What can mitigate sorrow? The Only answer is Du Kang liquor". The poem brought fame to the wine and the name of the wine persists to this day. Actually people today drink the wine not for mitigating sorrow, but for enjoyment. To drink this wine can help you prove its timeless quality for yourself. Though it is a little bit longer, it can introduce Chinese culture to English audience. As is known, China has profound culture in the history of 5000 years. Many foreigners are interested in it. Thus, this extra compensation can achieve much more attention. Literalness and adaptation constitute two extreme opposites in the continuum of various strategies. There are various degrees between the two extremes.

3.2.4 The combination usage of the three method referred above

Actually the combination of transliteration and gallery is a clever method of advertising translation and it is a way to change the cultural connotation of the brand and to convert their original culture information with new forms of expression to achieve the aim of cultural marketing. Such translation techniques used in advertising translation is the most successful, like the well-known classic case--- the translation of the Hong Kong brand "金利来". The translation of "Gold lion" is a combination of paraphrase and transliteration,"gold"is translated as 金、利, "lion" is a transliteration that is a symbol of wealth flowing, which meet the psychology of the Chinese audience probable and create a clever combination of opportunities.

The combination of free translation and literal translation has an extensive application in the title and slogan of advertising. Compares with free translation, literal translation adapted to the less situation. With the development of society, people pay more and more attention on pursuit of novelty. In order to make the advertising slogan attracted people’s attention, it is necessary to pay attention to the flexible use of language skills, more use of the modified method and special sentences, which also can reflect the differences between languages. Many cases cannot use direct translation and can only use free translation or a combination of both methods.

Such as, "新北京，新奥运"

"New Beijing, Great Olympic"

The original and the translated versions both are talk about Beijing and the Olympic Games, With its clear content, the brief expression form, clear and bright ideographic, the readers can have a good understanding of Chinese and Western different social and cultural background, experience, vision, thinking mode and aesthetic angles. So the combination of literal and free translation is useful, "新北京" direct translated to the New Beijing while "新奥运" free translated to Great Olympic.

4．Conclusion

As a main method of promoting products or services, advertising becomes more and more important in the commercial society. It not only has the ability of attracting consumers’ attention, but also has persuasive power. The main purpose and function of advertising is to motivate the target audience to take action and buy the promoted products. The advertising translation makes the advertising fulfill its function in the international market.

Advertising is an action that businessmen aim at opening up market and increasing economic benefits, which determines advertisement translation must have the persuading function, especially to persuade gust to buy products. The purpose of advertising is to persuade the public to purchase a product or service, so is the purpose of advertisement translation. Therefore, the functional translation theory is the key theory guiding advertisement translation. In recent years, the translation activities in western translation theory field also thrive basing on different ways and methods in translation studies, there have been a number of schools, such as the translation of the linguistic school，the translation of study school, the translation of culture school, the translation of functionalist school, the translation of multivariate system school etc. And the translation of advertisement has the closest relation with functional translation theory. As translation is the transformation involving language and non language symbol. So, the translation process should be controlled by the dominant function, or controlled by the text "Skopos" (objective function). As a result, the functional translation theory has profound influence and significance on advertising translation.

Functional translation theories made a breakthrough in the traditional translation field, which had been dominated by equivalence theory for a long time. Focusing on the target text and its functionality in the target culture, functionalist approaches direct a new way of advertising translation. The source text cannot be departed completely. It provides the basic materials for the translation. Otherwise, the source text and the target text will be separated from each other thoroughly and translation is meaningless. However, it does not play a key role in the advertising translation. Functionalist approaches to ad translation set translators free from the bound of the source text, and entitle them to choose whatever strategies they think are appropriate to translate the advertising text. Translators have much more freedom for their creativity.

Whether the advertisement translation is successful or slightly controversial, we also can learn the special effects and pivotal role of international advertisement. And more and more English advertisements are close to our life with the interaction and communication of international market. Of course, our advertising is also rushing into such international market. We can say that the corresponding of English advertisements translation is the important way for each other to communicate smoothly. In order to make both sides’ production to be understand accurately, we must remember that the do’s and don’ts in English advertisements translation work. It is important for our better to keep up with the pace of language development that to study the characteristics of English advertisements, grasp the language features of English advertisements and following the advertisement’s aims.

Advertising language is the unity of language and culture. A successful advertising translation should analysis the culture, grasp the trends development of culture and show the principles of cultural values. Then the translation should be recreated based on those factors according to the principles of culture adaptability of the text. With the development of economy, only those ads which are fully rooted in cultural factors can be impressive. What’s more, ads also need deliver the information and features of products accurately, so it would become a powerful catalyst in today’s competitive commodity market.