How Culture Influences Advertisement Translation
How Culture Influences Advertisement Translation.
Introduction
In our everyday life, every time we watch television or while we are surfing the internet, advertising is behind the corner and sometimes we do not even realize we are listening to it. We are bombarded by slogans and catchy phrases that catch our attention and make us customers of the product advertised in a way that is not direct but instead hidden and implicit. Without being aware of it, we buy products because when shopping, something triggered in our mind: a hidden input given by a catchy phrase or a picture in the advert we remember. This is in fact the power of advertising: keeping the customers’ memory alive on the product.
For big companies it is therefore important to translate the advertisements and slogans in the most appropriate way to the target language, using words and phrases that function in the same way as the source text and have the same impact on customers. This is a quite difficult job because not only the text has to be translated, but the target language text should also convey the feelings and emotions played around the source text of the commercial. Literal translations are for this reason not enough effective because the translator should also reproduce the atmosphere and feeling of the slogan, attract the attention and create memorable phrases which in a different target language could be quite different from the source language.
Translation can be intended as a product or as a process. The process of translation involves the translator who has the task of changing the original text (source text) in a source language into a text (target text) in a target language. Transferring the meaning and the main idea of a text into a target language could at first sight seem easy, but the translator has on the contrary a great and significant task, and sometimes needs to interpret from the source text and put some personal features to the target text.
When analyzing advertising as
Introduction
In our everyday life, every time we watch television or while we are surfing the internet, advertising is behind the corner and sometimes we do not even realize we are listening to it. We are bombarded by slogans and catchy phrases that catch our attention and make us customers of the product advertised in a way that is not direct but instead hidden and implicit. Without being aware of it, we buy products because when shopping, something triggered in our mind: a hidden input given by a catchy phrase or a picture in the advert we remember. This is in fact the power of advertising: keeping the customers’ memory alive on the product.
For big companies it is therefore important to translate the advertisements and slogans in the most appropriate way to the target language, using words and phrases that function in the same way as the source text and have the same impact on customers. This is a quite difficult job because not only the text has to be translated, but the target language text should also convey the feelings and emotions played around the source text of the commercial. Literal translations are for this reason not enough effective because the translator should also reproduce the atmosphere and feeling of the slogan, attract the attention and create memorable phrases which in a different target language could be quite different from the source language.
Translation can be intended as a product or as a process. The process of translation involves the translator who has the task of changing the original text (source text) in a source language into a text (target text) in a target language. Transferring the meaning and the main idea of a text into a target language could at first sight seem easy, but the translator has on the contrary a great and significant task, and sometimes needs to interpret from the source text and put some personal features to the target text.
When analyzing advertising as
Bibliography: Cook, G. (2001). The Discourse of Advertising. London and New York: Routledge. Dyer, G. (2003). Advertising as Communication. London and New York: Routledge. Goddard, A. (2002). The Language of Advertising. London and New York: Routledge. Hatim/Munday. (2004) Translation. An Advanced Resource Book. Routledge. Munday, J. (2008) Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications. London and New York: Routledge. Links: www.nutella.it/ www.wakeuptonutella.co.uk/ www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-LavXsgRlw www.wikio.co.uk/video/ferrero-rocher-advert---ambassador-reception-4109576