Influences of Language and Cultural Differences on the
Advertising Translation
Abstract: Advertisement has become one of the most important products of culture in the
modern age. It is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential
customers to purchase or to consume products or service of a brand. Especially,
advertising language is characterized by cultural and age background. Western languages
are rule-dominated, while the Chinese is dominated by people. There are many
differences in the structure of language, and when describe something in advertisement,
Chinese tends to imagine, but English tends to preciseness. A good trademark translation
embodies the perfect combination of translation technology and aesthetics. Different
culture has different impact on advertising translation including history, value, and
custom and so on. This paper gives a detailed analysis of advertisement translation, and
some valuable examples.
中英语言与文化差异对广告翻译的影响
摘要：广告已成为一种非常重要的文化产品之一，在当今时代，广告已经成为不同地域之间的一种沟通的方式，它的方式通常是说服潜在客户购买或消费自己的产品和服务。更重要的是广告语言的特点是具有文化和时代背景。西方语言以规则为主导，而中国却以人为主导；由于语言结构的不同，当他们描述事物时，中文注重幻想，但英语注重准确。一个好的商标翻译体现了翻译技术完美结合，不同的文化在广告翻译中具有非常重要的影响，它包括历史，价值，习俗等。本文对广告翻译从语言和文化差异方面进行了详细分析，还有一些有价值的例子。
关键词：广告; 广告翻译; 文化; 语言
Contents
1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 2
2. language impact of advertising Translation .................................................................... 3
2.1 The differences of the structure of language in the Sino-British advertising ............ 3
2.2 the defferences of choosing the words ...................................................................... 4
2.3 the differences of pronunciation of the words in Sino-British advertising. .............. 4
3. The impact of culture on advertising Translation ........................................................... 5
3.1 The impact of Historical and cultural on advertising translation .............................. 5
3.2 Value reflected in the advertisement translation. ....................................................... 6
3.3 Cultural custom impact on advertising translation .................................................... 7
4. Definition of domestication ............................................................................................ 8
5.Conclusion ......................................................................................................................11
6.Acknowledgement……………………………………………………………………..12
Influences of Language and Cultural Differences on the
Advertising Translation
1. Introduction
As to cultural products, advertising reflects the close relationship between language
and culture directly. Advertising language is a special kind of art form which has
profound cultural background. The trend of times also affects the language and culture n
advertising and decides whether the translation and advertising effectiveness is good or
bad. Therefore, the translator needs not only a solid foundation of language but also an
in-depth understanding of the two different cultures. This paper analyzes the influence of
language and cultural differences on the advertising translation from the aspect of
language, emphasis can be put on three areas: the structure of language, vocabulary choice and pronunciation to illustrate the importance of language translation for
advertising, at the same time, the corresponding examples are cited, so that the reader has
an intuitive feeling of the importance of language; as to the cultural field, it explains the
importance of culture from the three areas of history, values, and cultural in the
advertising translation. At the end of my paper, I gave the definition of domestication in
the advertising translation as complement.
2. Language impact of advertising Translation
2.1 The differences of the structure of language in the Sino-British advertising
Mr. Shen Xiao long has said that the Western languages are rule-dominated, while
the Chinese is dominated by people. In other words, Chinese is a meaning-centered
language, the grammar rules are relatively free, and sentences are flexible, the vocabulary
may be longer or shorter, part of speech are diverse and variable. For the Western
languages, the dominant position of grammar, sentence mainly composed of verb and
verb phrase can not change lightly.
For example: The slogan of the Nokia “Connecting People”. It’s not a complicated
sentence, consist of a predicate and a noun, also the grammatical structure is very
standardized and simple. However, the two words are very powerful, and they’re easy to
acknowledge people the three-dimensional feel of the product. However, the structure of
language can not be arbitrarily changed. When translating it into Chinese, the subject
“technology” should be proposed, and the importance of the human language of the art is
better to be stressed.
There are many modifiers in the Chinese advertising which focus on emotional
expression, on the contrary, the expression of English advertising is very simple as it
focuses on information transfer. For example:
满树金花，芳香四溢的金桂；花白如雪，香气扑鼻的桂银；红里透黄，花多味浓的紫砂桂；花色似银，季季有花的四季桂，竞相开放，竞相开放，争妍媲美。进入桂花公园，阵阵的桂花花香扑鼻而来.
When the sentence above is to be translated into English advertising, considering the
differences of language structures, those descriptive words in the source language should
be deleted. The literal translation can be like this: