In this article, we attempt to discuss the advertising translation though the adaptation theory, which involves linguistic context and non-linguistic context. The linguistic context contains pronunciations, words, syntax and rhetoric. And the social environment, historical environment, the author's background knowledge and culture diathesis are included in the non-linguistic context. We point out the main points of those factors and explain the methods how the translators adapted to the features mentioned above by giving appropriate examples, in order to broaden the range of the study to advertising translation.
2. Literature Review
In The Origin of Species Darwin holds the view that the theory of biological evolution generally contains three concepts, the biological variation, the adaptation to survive and the evolution of species. The adaptation to survive refers to the common phenomenon that organisms adapt to the environment and living condition. Therefore, to adapt to the natural environment, the basic rules are eliminating the weaker, and retaining the stronger, and the fittest will survive. Verschueren accepts the idea of Darwin in the Pragmatics as a Theory of Linguistic Adaptation. He holds the view that language has the same characteristic of adaptation as organisms, and transfers into the variability, negotiability and adaptability.
The adaptation theory is put forward by the Belgian international pragmatics association secretary general Verschueren in the Pragmatics as a Theory of Linguistic Adaptation, he believes that linguistic adaptation refers to language adapted to environment, or environment adapted to language, maybe they are both mutual adaptation. The process of using language is a process of selecting language based on highly flexible principles and strategies, the reason why users can select different vocabulary is because language is variability, negotiability and adaptability. While using language, people should make some choices of language constantly according to three kinds of characteristics of language. Among those characteristics, the variability make the choice of language possible, and determine that the language choice must be limited within a certain range; negotiability excluded blunt expression of language, and makes language more flexible; adaptation refers to that in order to meet the need of communication, the user of language can make flexible choices from different linguistic items. These three characteristics are related to each other, the adaptation theory is especially important.源:自/751-·论,文'网·www.751com.cn/
The selection process is actually a adaptation process between the language structure and context, that is to say, any process of using language requires adaptation process, to meet the need of communication.
3. Advertisement Translation under Adaptation Theory
3.1 Features of Advertising Translation
Robert Laurent, a famous French advertisement critic, had said that the air we breath consists of oxygen, nitrogen and advertisement. From here we can see that advertisement has played a prominent role in modern commodity economic. We can see advertisements here and there, ranging from politics, finance to civilization and science and technology. Advertisement, just as its name implies, is a campaign to inform the public and media of something by means of some medium, while main function is to touch the readers and comfort the wants of consuming.
Advertising translation consists of the title, notes, slogan, logo and riders, which emphasizes the effect of the translation: it should provide not only enough and intelligible information about the commodity, but also the same feelings that original can give to the consumers. Therefore, the most important standard in advertising translation is the effect of this translation and the feelings of the readers, which is also the way to judge and weigh its translation.文献综述
Advertisement is a high-context style of writing—the advertisement may want to persuade the consumers to buy the product but they will imply the consumers instead of explicating. An advertisement is full of self-evident preinstall and implied hints. The words used in advertisement are unique, the sentence is dexterous and contain is rich. It has a strong feeling of artistic appeal and beauty of the language. While translating, considering the difference of language civilization, translators should retain the original idea as much as possible, and try to reproduce the creativity of original text. Translators need not to make the same expression as the original text, but should focus on keeping the effect that the original text does. Therefore, the basic principle of advertising translation is equivalent.