An Application of Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory to Chinese to English Advertising Translation the Advertising
Abstract

With the tremendous development of Chinese economy, the progress of science and technology, the popularity of mass media, as well as the acceleration of globalization, advertising has already become an indispensable or inescapable part of our everyday life. China’s success in becoming a member of WTO makes the economical connection between China and other countries increasingly tight. Companies in China no longer restrict themselves into domestic market; instead they try to expand international market as well. Definitely, advertising is a significant tool for those companies to conquer the beachhead of the international market. Therefore, advertising translation as a study of area has attracted much attention from scholars and translators.

However, through careful study of the past relating researches, the author of this thesis finds that in the actual practice of advertising translation, there are many effective and professional examples of English to Chinese translation; however, Chinese to English Ads translation is still unsatisfactory. Besides, the current study in the advertising translation has some deficiencies: first, many papers in this field are just relevant to unique features of advertising language or only related to some advertising translation strategies, lack of essential guiding theories. Besides, many papers in this field use the same examples over and over again to expound the suggested translating theories.
 
Based on Nida’s functional equivalence, especially his “reader’s response” and “content over form”, the author of this thesis tries to apply Nida’s functional theory into ads translation from the aspect of culture and language itself. Besides, the author also concludes some translating strategies by employing some authentic advertising examples to testify.

To due degree, the result of this thesis will be a supplement to the relative researches on advertising translation. Besides, it can also guide the Chinese to English advertising translation and help improve the quality of Chinese to English translating advertisements. At the same time, the Chinese producers can get a seat in the world market by using effective translated advertisements to win the heart of international customers.

Key words: Nida’s functional theory, advertising translating, translating strategies, culture, language