Culture is the first factor to be considered for any translator. It is very important, the nature of survival for an enterprise. As companies engage in business activities in any other marketplace, they must learn about the culture of this location to achieve a perfect market. They should know exactly what the customer needs from which they can help the customers feel satisfy. Advertising,
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can help companies contact with their customers; however, without understanding the cultural messages what advertisers want to convey to customers will easily be misunderstood and probably leading to the failure of the company..
When creating a slogan, companies may have trouble related to cultural values. This is an example. A few years ago, Pepsi tried its slogan translated as
"Come alive: You're in the Pepsi Generation" into Chinese. As a results, the Chinese version is "Pepsi Brings Your ancestors back from the dead ".
Another example can be seen in the case of New computer system of Vista Microsoft which launched a term to dishonor a woman aged, frumpy in Latvia.
And Motorola's Hello moto ringtones like "Hello, Fatty - Hello fat people" in India.
So it is no surprise that most of these companies use puns - the alliteration, the pun and the words mean expansion - this is almost mandatory in the advertising slogan. While verbal humor can complement the newness of an advertisement, it means that the stylistic devices are virtually incapable of translation into other languages.
In Asia, many generations live together in the same house therefore generally they develop close relationships with the people around than in the Western countries. Asians are not encouraged to express an opinion for not offending others. For example, in Vietnam, the same product Sunsilk shampoo, the slogan "Millions girlfriend in Vietnam believe in miracles" were accepted more easily than with the slogan "Life is not waiting". The reason is that the slogan "millions" has been imposed on the majority sentiment, creating a sense
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of security and peace of mind for the user. Meanwhile, the slogan "life is not waiting for" will be understood in a wrong direction that is encouraging young people cohabiting.
3.2. Some tips to translate slogan from English into Vietnamese Analyze the original
Your source text should be reviewed by someone in market for images, phrases or concepts that might not work in all countries, such as some sports pictures, metaphors and idiomatic expressions. Having this feedback before translation begins can help you decide whether to change the original in order to have consistency across translations, or to give your translation provider license to use the images and metaphors most effective in the target languages. In an ideal scenario, the writer of the source materials has been trained in writing global-friendly content.
Determine target audience
Before you send your text to the translator, determine if the project is global or regional in scope. This will determine your target languages. Note that the slogan needs to reflect the habits, tastes and lifestyle of a certain group of people. You will need to consider the risks and benefits with each scenario.
Share the knowledge
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In order to produce copy that you like, a translation provider needs to understand the objective of the text, the target audience and the preferred style as well. Having a local style guide will be important to getting the message right.
Expect a lot of feedback
Language is subjective and reactions can be strong when it comes to marketing or stylistic texts. Allow enough time when scheduling for a final refinement step where the feedback from reviewers is analyzed, harmonized (if more than one reviewer is participating) and implemented.
Slogans are tricky
Slogans and taglines are extremely challenging and time-consuming to localize and may need to change slightly or significantly in the target language. It’s hard to get a slogan to work across all markets, which is why a global slogan is rare.
McDonald’s didn’t create their first global slogan “I’m Lovin’ It” until 2003, and it was kept in English for most countries..
Take a notice of the first and second person pronouns
“I”, “we”, “you” in English or “tôi”, “bạn”, “chúng ta”, in Vietnamese often give people good feelings. According to conventional psychology, a person will easily accept the use of a product or a service when they recommend their friends to try. The use of such personal pronouns in television advertising will help erase the gap between producers and consumers. When potential customers see an advertisement with frequent use of first and second personal pronouns they will feel as if the manufacturer is talking to them face to face as friends,
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who will give them the right advice. The actual businesses or say rather than advertisers gave consumers a sense of central location, thoughtful attention, thereby creating their motivation to use the advertised product. For example:
Instead of “Because I’m worth it!” later “Because you’re worth it” and finally, in late 2009, the slogan was changed into “Because we’re worth it (The company L’Oreal). Pronoun “I” is replaced with the pronoun “you” and “we”, thereby eliminating the negative opposition “famous female star - an ordinary woman”
Part C: Conclusion and recommendation 4.1. Conclusion
4.1.1. Summary of the findings
Advertising slogan language is a special kind of language. It has its own features in morphology, syntax, and rhetorical devices. Simple and attractive are two general features of advertising slogan language. Different as they are, all the advertisement slogans are alike in one important way. It is stylistic devices that make advertisements slogan more effective and persuasive.
The thesis has been carried out in the light of stylistics. The literature review which includes a review of previous studies and theoretical background mentions some studies about advertising slogan. This study also has focused on a descriptive and analysis of grammatical features (Sentential level, phrasal level, tense), stylistic devices (metaphor, metonymy, simile, pun, personification, apostrophe, repetition, parallelism, antithesis, hyperbole) and sound techniques (rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, rhythm) in advertising slogan. This study
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has tried to present and interpret stylistic features of the two commonly used stylistic devices in advertising communication. The writer has given the discussion to clarify roles of understanding culture in slogan translation and give some tips to translate the slogan from English into Vietnamese.
4.1.2. Limitations of the study
Due to the lack of time, space as well as relevant materials, the topic under study may not have been thoroughly discussed as it should be. This thesis only investigates some aspects of advertising language. With the limited data for the analysis, all kinds of repetition and antithesis have not been covered. Furthermore, the similarities and differences in stylistic features in English and Vietnamese advertising language has not been analyzed clearly yet.
4.2. Suggestions for further study
Some further research could be carried out under the following domains:
- An investigation into a pun on advertising language.
- A better study on antithesis in English and Vietnamese advertisements
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Reference
English materials
1. Bussman, Hadumod. Routledge (1996). Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. London, New York: Routledge.
2. Cook. G. (1996 ). The discourse of advertising. London: Routledge
3. Cuddon J. A. (1999). The Penguin dictionary of literary terms and literary theory. London: Penguin Books Ltd.
4. David Crystal and Davy Derek (1969) . Investigating English Style.
New Yord: Routledge.
5. Ding, X. (2003). Stylistic Features of the Advertising Slogan. Available from the Internet (http://www.translationdirectory.com/article49.htm) 6. Galperin. I. R. (1971). Stylistics. Moscow: Higher School Publishing
House.
7. Gramley and Pọtzold (2002). A survey of modern English. New York, Routledge.
8. Kristen Hamlin (1998). The Importance of Ad Slogans. Califonia:
Demand Media
9. Leech. G. (1972). English in advertising: a linguistic study of advertising in Great Britain. English Language Series. London: Longman
10.Myers M. D (1997). Qualitative research in information systems. London:
Idea Group.
11.Rossiter, John and Percy, Larry 1987. Advertising and promotion management. New York: McGraw-Hill.