Abstract

With the advent of economic globalization and rapid development of Chinese economy, we can see the commercial advertisements mushroom quickly. Moreover, we consider that China has become one of the world’s top ten advertising prosperity country. In our modern commercial society, the characteristic of propaganda of commercial advertisements plays a key role in the fierce market competition. Therefore, the commercial advertisements get more and more attention from the public and the status of the advertisement translation become more and more important. We gradually realise that the quality of the translation of advertisements would have affect the reputation of a corporation at a large extent.

This thesis employs skopos theory as the theoretical foundation and mainly focuses on the guidance of skopos theory to Chinese translation of commercial advertisements. The thesis first introduces the advertising and talks about the studies on the advertising translation in China and foreign countries. However, there are some limitations on current studies. In the second part of this thesis, the author introduces the skopos theory and its three basic rules including skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule. The skopos theory can apply into a variety of translating fields. In the third part, the author talks about the analysis of advertising guided by three basic rules and five translation methods based on skopos theory. In the last part of the thesis, the author gives a conclusion to the major findings and some limitations of this thesis.

This thesis tends to emphasize the commercial advertisement research under the guidance of skopos theory. We should combine the skopos theory with the factors of culture, language, consumer psychological together, which makes the advertisements not only readability, catchy value, but also have the effect of persuasion. As a result, advertisement translation can play a key role in promoting goods in the international market, at the same time, the maximum value of commercial advertisements can be achieved. 

Key words: translation, skopos theory, commercial advertisements, international, cultural difference