Keywords: Context Adapts to Cultural Orientation Advertising Translation
As one of the important features of modern commercial society, advertising has penetrated into every corner of the world. Due to economic globalization and the development of world foreign trade, the translation of commodity advertisements has become more and more important. Advertising is an activity that spreads all kinds of highly refined information to the public by artistic means, in order to strengthen or change people's ideas and eventually lead to people's behavior. Its purpose is to make the advertising audience accept the goods they sell and become consumers. In advertising translation, if the translation fails to convince the advertising audience to buy, it will fail. Many experts at home and abroad advocate that advertising translation should be guided by communicative translation, functional equivalence, relevance translation and skopos theory. This paper tries to discuss advertising translation from the perspective of cultural orientation of context adaptation.
1. Context Adaptation Theory
Belgian pragmaticist Jef Verschueren put forward the theory of language adaptation in Understanding Pragmatics published by 1999, which examines the use of language from a brand-new perspective. According to this theory, the use of language is, in the final analysis, a process of constantly choosing languages. The reason why language users can make all kinds of appropriate choices in the process of language use is that language has variability, negotiation and adaptability, in which variability and negotiation are the conditions and foundation, and adaptability is the fundamental and purpose. Adaptation has four characteristics, namely contextual adaptation, structural object adaptation, dynamic adaptation and adaptation process consciousness, which describe and explain the communication process. Context adaptation, as one of the four characteristics, means that the choice of language in the process of language use must conform to the communicative context and language context. Communicative context consists of two parties, the physical world, the social world and the psychological world, among which these two parties are in the core position, because various contextual components of the physical world, the social world and the psychological world are activated through their interaction, thus giving play to the communicative function of language; Language context refers to the various means that language chooses according to contextual factors in the process of using. Verschueren believes that the language choices made by language users in choosing and understanding languages must conform to the communicative context and language context, and they should make appropriate choices in specific scenes, specific communities and specific public institutions. The relationship between them is two-way, that is, the language should not only adapt to the context, but also change and reshape the context.
2. Cultural orientation of context adaptation
Translation is a kind of language communication behavior and a cross-cultural meaning transformation. In the process of translation, the translator is the intermediary between the source text and the target text, and between the source culture and the target culture. As the main body of translation, the translator must correctly understand the original text from its context and social and cultural environment, understand the communicative intention of the original text, understand the cognitive context of the target readers, adapt to the physical world, social world, psychological world, language structure and dynamic process in the context, grasp the cultural orientation of the source language and the target language, make the language choice with the best contextual effect and choose the best target language.
2. 1 Cultural orientation adapted to the material world
The physical world refers to the referential relationship between time and space, including event time, speaking time, referential time and absolute space, as well as the relative space of the referent, as well as body language related to speech acts, such as the posture, gestures, physiological characteristics and appearance of the communicator. We know that the generation of the original text is the product of adapting to the time and space background at that time. When understanding the original text, the translator should not only adapt to the time and space when the original text was created, but also adapt to the time environment in which the target readers are translating, consider their cultural psychology and acceptance ability, grasp the orientation of the target culture, and adapt to the different reading expectations of the target readers in different times. Only in this way can he make language choices that vary from person to person, from place to place and from time to time, and express the target language that is in line with the communicative context at that time.
2.2 The social world adapts to cultural orientation
Social world refers to social occasions, social environment and cultural atmosphere, which contains the language code of conduct that restricts and regulates both sides of communication, that is to say, the language choice of communicators must conform to various communication norms in the social world. Among all social factors, culture is a very important factor, because translation involves the different language families and social and cultural backgrounds of the original author, translator and target readers. Translators must understand the cultural formation process, social system, historical tradition, customs and religious culture of the two languages, find out the local intersection, collision and conflict between the two cultures, correctly understand the information intention of the original text, understand the reading expectations of the target readers, and make the translation with the best contextual effect.
2.3 Cultural orientation of psychological world adaptation
The psychological world includes cognitive and emotional factors such as personality, emotion, desire and motivation of all parties in communication. These psychological factors restrict the speaker's language choice, in other words, the speaker's language choice is a dynamic process that conforms to the psychological world of himself and the listener. Because the communicators have different social and cultural backgrounds, including personal feelings, education, personality, attitude and motivation, in the process of translation, the translator should regard every sentence in the original text as a part of some kind of communicative activity, so as to adapt to the psychological world of the communicators at that time, their personalities, emotions, desires and motivations, and understand the communicative intention of the source language and the cultural psychology of the target readers, so as to make the translation more accurate and appropriate.
2.4 Cultural orientation of context adaptation
Linguistic context refers to the various means that language chooses according to contextual factors in the process of using, including intra-textual cohesion, inter-textual restriction and linear order. As we all know, language is the carrier of culture, and philosophy, values, social customs, psychological patterns, traditions and beliefs in the cultural system will be reflected in language. English and Chinese have different cultural systems, which makes their language characteristics and styles different. Therefore, when choosing a language, the translator should not only consider the semantics, pragmatic style, situational factors and the logic of the text context, but also convey the information of the original text according to the expression habits of the target language, so as to achieve the pragmatic purpose of the source language.
3. The application of cultural orientation of context adaptation in advertising translation.
Advertising is a special practical text, and its translation is different from general literary texts, pursuing the most natural and appropriate equivalence, and also different from general scientific and technological texts, emphasizing semantic equivalence. A large part of the particularity of advertising translation comes from cultural factors. Specific culture, values, psychological model and language style affect the psychological behavior of operators and consumers, thus affecting the advertising effect. Therefore, in advertising translation, the translator should have a keen cross-cultural awareness, understand the cultural differences between the source language and the target language, consider the psychological feelings of the target language readers, adjust the cultural orientation in time, realize the harmony between the two cultures, and reproduce the advertising language of the source language culture in the specific cultural context of the target language, so as to achieve the expected purpose of advertising.
3. 1 Advertising translation should conform to the target language culture.