With the development of the world economy, trademark and advertisement translation is becoming increasingly important to company development. Whether the commodity sells well or not, doesn’t only depend on its good quality, but also depends on appropriate advertisement and trademark translation. Under this circumstance, trademark and advertisement translation consist of language translation and culture translation. (卢曦，1999) That is to say, trademark and advertisement translation should be consistent with the custom and culture of the two target languages. Therefore, we can learn some cultural differences between Chinese and English from analyzing samples of trademark and advertisement between Chinese and English. In addition, as Hou Weirui point out in English linguistics that English advertisement can be divided into two kinds: the soft selling and hard selling. Hard selling appeal to the reason of audience by advertising the characteristics and qualities of commodity in order to convince the customs. Soft selling resorts to the rhetoric devices to beautify the advertising words in order to appeal to the emotion of audience. In this paper, it mainly deals with the soft selling in terms of translation.
Firstly, it gives an introduction, in which translation and relationship between translation and culture difference are illustrated, and the cultural features in advertisement translation are demonstrated The next part is about different culture background between English and Chinese, and gives analysis to the difference by comparing some concrete examples in terms of prerequisite of conversion, amplification, and omission. Then it gives a pragmatic analysis on how the two peoples make use of their language. For instance: Chinese tend to the more indirect and prefer the use of modifiers in communication, while speakers of English prefer the more direct and concise expression. Then it makes comparative studies of the sample advertisements, which aim at illustrating the following facts: The first is that Chinese advertisement usually adopt the “I” centered attitude and focus on the propaganda of their production and services. However, English advertisement adopts the “you” centered attitude. That is to say, they focus on telling what they can do for their customers. The second is Chinese advertisement think highly of the public’s feeling, while English advertisement pay attention to individuality. The third is Chinese advertisement attach importance to people’s physiological need, while English advertisement values spiritual life. Chinese advertisement attaches importance to tradition, but English advertisement pays more attention to innovation. In the end of the paper, we come to the conclusion that the culture difference between Chinese and English can be learned by analyzing the sample of trademark and advertisement .At the same time, trademark and advertisement influences the social custom and culture to some extent.
Key Words
Trade mark; translation; cultural difference; dynamic equivalence
