商标英语翻译的语言特点 第3页
(2)Using Place Names - In the past, place names were commonly used as brand names, such as the place names of city, mountain, river, scenery, etc. Quite often, companies like to use the place names of company locations or product origins, such as Nokia, Champaigne, and Cognac. Imaginary place names can also be used such as Eden Vale, Shangri-La, and Avalon. e.g., “Avon”, a famous brand name of women cosmetics, was taken from Avon, originally the river name of Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare. Because the company founder was a keen admirer of Shakespeare, so he chose “Avon” as his brand name. Nokia, Finnish brand for telecom products, first appeared in the 1860s. “Nokia” is a small mountain village in Finland where the company was first located.
(3)Using Other Proper Names – e.g., “Olympus”, the brand of Japanese electronic products, derived from a proper name, Olympus, the place where gods lived.
2. Naming after Dictionary Words
Beginning from early 20th century to mid 20th century, most companies just chose a good word from the dictionary as brand names. Generally speaking, these words have favorable, positive meanings, able to suggest product benefits to customers. Dictionary words are existing ones. It is quite simple to choose from the dictionary. Generally speaking, dictionary words that have good inherent semantic meanings can be widely used. Mostly commonly used dictionary words are animal and plant names and adjectives, etc. e.g., “Pampers”, “Safeguard”, “Apple”, “7-Up”, and “Jaguar”.
3. Naming after Coined Words
From mid 20th century onwards, most of the brand names are coined, not chosen. Proper names are prohibited to register as trademarks; good dictionary words are less and less available to companies. Naming after proper names and dictionary words may be easier and less time-consuming, but there are many restrictions and limitations on them. Proper names are relatively few in number, and lack of distinctiveness, and may not be registered. Dictionary words may be good, but there are fewer and fewer words in the dictionary available for new brand names, because most of them have been registered as trademarks. Due to the above reasons, today, most of the companies turn to coined words, or neologisms, to be used as brand names and trademarks. Today the prevailing approach is to make, or to coin new names that do not exist in the language.本文来自辣'文~论-文.网
Neologisms have been considered as the preferred source for brand naming, widely used in modern commercial world. A neologism is also called a coined word. It is a newly-made word that does not exist in the language or in the dictionary. For example, “Kodak” is a neologism while “Pampers” is not.
2 The Linguistic Characteristics of Branding English
Linguistically, names are developed by combining morphemes, phonemes and syntax to create a desired representation of a product.毕业论文
http://www.751com.cnMorphemes differ from words in that many morphemes may not be able to stand alone. The Sprint name is composed of a single word and a single morpheme. Conversely, a brand like Acuvue is composed of two morphemes, each with a distinct meaning. While “vue” may be able to stand as its own word, “acu” is seen as a prefix or a bound morpheme that must connect to a free morpheme like “vue.”
Phonemes are minimal units of sound. Depending on the speaker’s accent, the English language has about 44 phonemes. In product naming, names that are phonetically easy to pronounce and that are well balanced with vowels and consonants have an advantage over those that are not. Likewise, names that begin with or stress plosive consonant sounds B, hard C, D, G, K, P or T are often used because of their attention-getting quality. Some phoneme sounds in English, for example L, V, F and W are thought of as feminine, while others such as X, M and Z are viewed as masculine.
Syntax, or word order, is key to consumers’ perceptions of a product name. Banana Republic would not carry the same meaning were it changed to “Republic Banana.” Syntax also has significant implications for the naming of global products, because syntax has been argued to cross the barrier from one language to another. (See the pioneering work on Universal Grammar by Noam Chomsky)
Some specific product naming characteristics, including a combination of morphemes, phonemes and syntax are shown below.
上一页 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] 下一页
商标英语翻译的语言特点 第3页下载如图片无法显示或论文不完整，请联系qq752018766
