VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES POST GRADUATE STUDIES DEPARTMENT - PHAN THỊ VÂN ANH A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES AND STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF ADVERTISING SLOGANS (NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC KHÓ KHĂN VÀ CHIẾN LƯỢC CHO VIỆC DỊCH ANH-VIỆT KHẨU HIỆU QUẢNG CÁO) M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 HA NOI, 2011 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES POST GRADUATE STUDIES DEPARTMENT - PHAN THỊ VÂN ANH A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES AND STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF ADVERTISING SLOGANS (NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC KHÓ KHĂN VÀ CHIẾN LƯỢC CHO VIỆC DỊCH ANH-VIỆT KHẨU HIỆU QUẢNG CÁO) M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Lê Hùng Tiến HA NOI, 2011 LIST OF FIGURES AND CHARTS FIGURES Figure Nida‟s three-stage system of translation Figure Different terms refer to slogans CHARTS Chart Lexical and structure modification in translating ad slogans from English into Vietnamese Chart Types and number of occurrences of wordplay Chart Number of translatable and untranslatable cases in five kinds of puns iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY OF STUDY PROJECT REPORT i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii ABSTRACTS iii LIST OF FIGURES AND CHARTS iv TABLE OF CONTENTS v PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Objectives of the study Research questions Scope of the study Methods of the study Structure of the study PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND TRANSLATION THEORY 1.1 Translation definition 1.2 Translation methods 1.3 Translation equivalence 11 1.3.1 Translation equivalence 11 1.3.2 Types of translation equivalence 11 1.4 Translation process 12 1.5 Translation procedure 13 ADVERTISING AND ADVERTISING SLOGANS 14 2.1 Advertising 14 2.1.1 Types of advertising 16 2.1.2 Language in advertisement 18 2.1.3 Structure of an advertisement 20 2.2 Advertising Slogans 22 2.2.1 Definition of advertising slogan 22 2.2.2 Characteristics of advertising slogans 25 v CHAPTER 2: STUDY OF DIFFICULTIES AND STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF AD SLOGANS 33 STUDY OF MODIFICATION IN LEXICAL AND STRUCTURE IN TRANSLATION OF ADVERTISING SLOGANS 34 1.1 Lexical addition 35 1.2 Lexical omission 36 1.3 Lexical adaptation 37 1.4 Structural addition 38 1.5 Structural omission 38 1.6 Structural adaptation 39 STUDY OF TRANSLATING PUNS IN AD SLOGANS 42 2.1 The phenomenon of puns in ad slogans 42 2.2 Translating puns into Vietnamese equivalent 44 PROBLEMS AND DIFFICULTIES IN AD SLOGAN TRANSLATION FROM ENGLISH TO VIETNAMESE 45 3.1 Unability to preserve nuance meaning 46 3.2 Pun as case of untranslatability 47 3.3 Neologism as a case of untranslatability 48 3.4 Cultural barrier 49 STRATEGIES FOR TRANSLATING AD SLOGANS 51 4.1 Recognizing the technique used 51 4.2 Understanding background information of ad slogans 54 4.3 Dealing with unstranslable factors 57 4.4 Preserving and reproducing typical qualities of ads slogan 59 4.5 Applying the original slogan: 63 SUMMARY 64 PART 3: CONCLUSION 66 Recapitulations 66 Suggested activities…………………………………………………………………… 69 Limitations and suggestion for further study 6971 REFERENCES 73 APPENDIX 76 APPENDIX 2: 80 vi PART 1: INTRODUCTION Rationale The work of translating advertising slogans, in other words as brand taglines, trademark, has gotten a lot of enthusiastic consultation There have been numerous studies and arguments around this absorbing and challenging matter Mr Bert Esselink, a globalization consultant for translation company Lionbridge Technologies gave comment on the translation work that “the phrase „translating advertising slogans‟ is not really appropriate,” but “It‟s usually a very creative process that consists of finding an equivalent expression in the target language that conveys a similar message to the original.” John Freivalds, with a lot experience in the international communications with the firm JFA Marketing in Lexington, Virginia, refers to this creative process as transcreation He argues that the localization of advertising slogans requires unique skills that may not be found in traditional advertising agencies Hence, how to well this creative process is still a question Personally, in the process of teaching and studying I am really attracted by ad slogans which might contain history or culture of a company as well as some curious story of language I also found out a wide scope of interesting situations of mistranslating or ineffective translation or failure in reality Besides, my students face to the same problems when they work with commercials and especially with these brand tradelines As the matter of fact, advertising slogans are considered brief, meaningful and full of nuances Thus, translating them from English into Vietnamese language is really sophisticated and challenging work It is not easy to be transferred these special ones without changing or fading out the shade of meaning The question raised is that whether there are any techniques or which methods are useful for handle the difficulties Furthermore, some earlier investigations only focus on interpreting the meaning and characteristics of ad slogans in borrowed words However, there has not been sufficient and satisfied study to decode the difficulties and figure out strategies for translating advertising slogans Even though it is never easy task, it is new and contributive to give a deep insight of the area These wondering and interests promisingly provide me with many interesting facts, ideas and directions to implement this study “A study on difficulties and strategies in English-Vietnamese Translation of Advertising Slogans” Objectives of the study In brief, the study aims specifically at: - To provide translators with vital understanding and significant characteristics of the language in advertising slogans - To compare and contrast English advertising slogans and its Vietnamese equivalent to find out the typical translating tendencies and difficulties that translators may deal with - To suggest some solutions as well as strategies for translators to handle difficulties in translating ad slogans and to improve translating work Research questions To achieve the aims within the scope, the research questions below are addressed: - What are major translating tendencies and typical characteristics in EnglishVietnamese transcreation of ad slogans? - What difficulties or problems translators might deal with in translating English ad slogans into Vietnamese? - What are particular techniques or methods can be applied for translating ad slogans from English into Vietnamese? Scope of the study In terms of studied subject, the thesis involves wide range of English ad slogans and their Vietnamese equivalents, which sources from television, newspapers, magazines and the Internet In general, I intent to choose well-known advertising slogans which draw attention from the public and meet the purposes and direction of study In particular, the selected advertising slogans in the thesis are the ones connecting to famous products or services; or the ones which have been successful or fail in reality; or the ones which reveal some interesting specialties in its message or in organization of words; etc In regards to targeted readers, all learners, teachers and translators are considered our audience Furthermore, the exercises designed in the study are aimed to business students for translation course Methods of the study In order to fulfill the aims of the study, the following methods have been used: - Comparative and contrastive methods - Quantitative and qualitative methods - Review of published related theories - Analysis and synthesis of selected data In the research, a number of original ad slogans in English and its equivalent in Vietnamese are collected and treated under various activities of observation, description, analysis, interpretation, synthesis, generalization and compare and contrast This research is the typical case of studying a matter in bilingual view with a combination of many methods, mentioned above, under a lot of dimensions and directions Structure of the study The thesis will be presented in length of approximately 80 pages and follow the formality of a typical post-graduated thesis It means that it consists of three main parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion Part 1- INTRODUCTION introduces Rationale, Objectives of the study, Scope of the study, Methods of the study and Structure of the study Part - DEVELOPMENT, costs the most energy and space, I intentionally divide it into three sections Chapter reviews Theoretical background of the study The concepts of translations theory such as Translation definition, Translation methods, Translation equivalence, Translation process and Translation procedures will be defined After that, I will provide a full understanding about Advertising, in which the definition, typical characteristics about types, language and structure are analyzed thoroughly Then, Ad slogans, as the focus concept in the study will be clarified in terms of definition and typical characteristics Chapter 2, namely Study of difficulties and strategies in English-Vietnamese translation of advertising slogan, goes insight of the matter with many aspects of the process of transposing advertising slogan from source language into a target one At the beginning, some tendencies in translating ad slogans in reality will be presented Next part is Modification in lexical and structure in translation of ad slogans by which I will observe slogans in bilingual pairs in terms of meaning, lexical and structure Then, Study of translating puns in ad slogans shows an interesting and popular case of translating rhetorical device in ad slogans After that, the part Problems and Difficulties in English-to-Vietnamese translating of ad slogans will be illustrated through a lot of famous experience and stories of the translation work Finally, the part Strategies for translating ad slogans exhibits in details the steps of how to trancreate a slogan into target language and offers some rules and techniques for making the best choice and best way of translation Chapter is the last but not least important part, namely the Application with various exercises designed for students in translation course and in business subject Part 3, namely CONCLUSION, will present the Recapitulation as well as Limitations and suggestions for further researches The final part provides References and Appendix with a list of 100 advertising slogans both English and Vietnamese, and some advertisements mentioned in the study PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND This section involves two parts, in which the first one reviews issues relating to translation theories, such as concept of translations, equivalence, methods, and translation procedure; whereas the second one presents general understanding on concepts of advertising and advertising slogans TRANSLATION THEORY 1.1 Translation definition The concept of translation has been discussed and presented by many scholars for many historical periods and from different perspectives The following citations taken from different sources provide an overview of numerous opinions on the notion These definitions will be presented in chronological order so that it will be easier to comprehend the evolution of this concept translation In 1965, translation is plainly defined as the replacement of textual material in source language by closet natural equivalent in target language (Catford 1965) Hartmann & Stock (1972) also share the same idea of the concept that “translation is the replace of a representation of a text in one language by a representation of another equivalence text in a second language” Nida & Taber (1974) call it as a reproducing process with the emphasis of meaning and style Similarly, Dubois (1973) makes the great consideration on the semantic and stylistic preservation in the equivalencies Later on, Wilss (1982) enhances the understanding of translation as the procedure which requires the syntactic, semantic, stylistic and text pragmatic comprehension The reference in linguistic nature, social context and communicative purposes are continuously remarked in the modern theorists‟ view of translation: “Translation, as the process of conveying messages across linguistic and cultural barriers, is an eminently communicative activity, one whose use could well be considered in a wider range of teaching situations than may currently be the case.” (Tudor, cited in Duff 1989) ... original A translation may never read as a contemporary of the translator A translation may add or omit from the original A translation may never add to or omit from the original A translation of. .. concept of translations, equivalence, methods, and translation procedure; whereas the second one presents general understanding on concepts of advertising and advertising slogans TRANSLATION THEORY... classified into two main groups, as in the following V-shaped chart: SL emphasis TL emphasis Word-for word translation Adaptation Literal translation Free translation Faithful translation Semantic translation