At the same time, professors and scholars whose majors are related to culture or language are keen on study about the translation of car names.Because another trend what we call cultural persity happening to our society is influencing our life intensively, too. And another stimulation is the rapid popularization of the information exchange. In this surrounding, People from different nations accept and absorb the culture that comes from other nations or areas as well as spread their own culture to the world. Nowadays, the value of culture implicit in commodity has become more and more remarkable.
Automobile, as a tool of transport, is a live advertising object itself. And with the help of the progress of technology and convenient means of transportation, it is now one of the most important vehicles in human’s life. As a commodity, it becomes more common and popular. Since 100 years ago, the automobile industry has been treated as the important part of pillar industry among developed countries. It was reported that nearly a half of the American families possessed cars in 1925 when the throughput was guaranteed by the flow production line of Ford. Then, as the production transferred, many countries started to have their own manufactures of automobile, too. People’s life standard improves with the social and economic growth. More and more families choose cars for moving. And Chinese market, with the large number of consumer group and mighty power of consumption, no doubt becomes a huge land for automakers.
Therefore, it’s a must to pay a special attention to the translation of car names from English to Chinese. The translation of car name can influence whether the product and the enterprise can dominate the market and establish an international image.
1.2 The Objective and Significance of the Research
As I have mentioned in the first part of the paper, the economic globalization and the trend of the cultural persity develops intensively. Besides, the relation between economy and culture is closer than before. Translation is defined as a complex action designed to achieve a particular purpose. As for the translation of car names, the major objective is to inform the customers to know and even to get familiar with the cars and the products and then to buy them. Thus, It is quite important and necessary for us to make a research on car name translation to learn more about the functions, strategies, methods in practical use according to this specific objective. It is clear that every car name is designed to publicize the commodity and service then to draw consumers’ eyes. For this reason, the translations need to keep the fidelity of the initial intention, in the meantime, have to be accepted and endeared by the target customers in Chinese market here we say. The theory we elaborate and apply in the research called skopos theory emphasizes the effect and purpose to the goal.
This paper will take effort to study the translations of Buick series.Through the study,there are several intentions.The most fundamental one is to enhance the awareness that the translation of a car name is very essential in today’s commodity economy era under the over-all environment of economic globalization and cultural persity developing more and more intensive.Besides,to discover the cultural obstacle and improve the cultural consciousness in course of translating the car names.And last,is the most pragmatic aim—to increase the quality and value of automobile car name translation from English into Chinese by the direction of skopos theory.
1.3 The Organization of the Research
This research consists of four parts .Chapter one provides the introduction of the research.It includes with the background,the objective and significance of the research and introduces the organization of the study.Next,Chapter two first gives an overview of car names, which contains two parts:one is about definition and features of the car names for automobiles,the other one is the formation of the car names and the analysis of the objectives.Chapter two is about the previous research of translation for car names the theoretical foundation.The next part states the practicality to apply the skopos theory to name translation of the series of Buick.Chapter four is the core of this research,the application of the skopos theory to name translation of the series of Buick which is separated into three parts.In this chapter,it tells us the function of the name translation of the series of Buick by skopos theory and discusses about the strategies and methods of name translation of the series of Buick.The last chapter is the chapter for conclusion.The research tries to make contribution to the translation theory application to practical use in car names.