Functional Equivalence in English Trademark Translation

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Functional Equivalence in English Trademark Translation 摘要：商标是商品的标记，是商品区别于同类产品的标志。商标翻译的好坏直接影响 到商品的销售。本文以宝洁公司旗下的品牌为例，运用奈达的功能对等理论对英语商标的翻译进行分析，发现英语商标的翻译可以运用音译法，直译法，和意译法，从而达到功能对等。 Key Words: English Trademark Translation, Functional Equivalence, Transliteration,

Literal Translation, Free Translation 1. Introduction As China is developing with a rapid speed, and has played a more and more important role in the international trade, more and more foreign companies have entered Chinese market and brought their goods into China. Since trademark is the symbol of the goods, the translation of trademark becomes important in people’s daily life. A number of scholars have devoted themselves into English trademark translation. Generally, the methods of English trademark translation are transliteration, free translation, combination of transliteration, free translation, and adjustment. (郑畅,2006) However, there are few comprehensive theories about English trademark translation. Since Procter & Gamble Co. is one of the world largest daily necessity manufacturers, which headquarters in America and has succeed in China, this paper will take some trademarks in Procter & Gamble Co. as examples, to analyze the methods in English trademark translation. The purpose of this study is to examine how Nide’s functional equivalence is applied in English trademark translation 2. Nide’s Functional Equivalence Theory Eugene A. Nide is a distinguished American translator, and is regarded as the most influential one among all contemporary translation theorists. “Functional equivalence” is Nida’s major contribution to translator studies, which is firstly employed as “dynamic equivalence” in Toward a Science of Translation. Since the expression “dynamic equivalence” has often been misunderstood by some translator as referring to “anything which might have special impact and appeal for receptors”, Nida replaced it with “functional equivalence” in 1986. (马会娟, 2009:98) “ Functional equivalence” is defined as “the reader of a translated text should be able to comprehend it to the point that they can conceive of how the original readers of text should readers of the text must have understood and appreciated it.” (Nida, 1993:118) In Nida’s view, translating is not to get something completely identical, but to reproduce “the closest natural equivalence to the source-language message. (马会娟,2009:91) 3. The Application of Functional Equivalence Theory in English Trademark Translation 3.1Transliteration Transliteration means to translate a trademark with the same or similar target vocabularies according to the pronunciation of the original trademark. (赵树,2010) Transliteration is one of the most widely used methods in English trademark translation. “Pantene”(潘婷), “Tide”(汰渍), “Lenor”（兰诺）are good examples. Their translated words are sounded similar with the original one. Besides, since one pronunciation has different Chinese characters and different meanings, people should pay attention to choosing proper Chinese characters in transliteration. Though “蟠停” and “潘婷” have similar pronunciations, “潘婷” is better, because it will give people a beautiful image, which appears like a young girl with a long hair. As the proverb goes, “the love for beauty is a nature of all human beings”. Thus, under the translation “潘婷”, “Pantene” will attract large amount of Chinese customers, which means its translated trademark has made a same good effect with its original one. In this way, it meets “function equivalence”. 3.2 Literal Translation Though transliteration is simple and easy to be applied, it does not work all the time, thus, another simple translation method—literal translation is needed. “Literal translation attempts to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the second language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original.”(Newmark, 2001:39) Since trademark generally consists of one or a few words, and has no sentence in it, literal translation in trademark translation only refers to translating the words in trademark. “If a more or less literal correspondence is functionally equivalent in both designative and associative meaning, then obviously no adjustments in form are necessary.”(Nida, 1993:125) That is to say, if the translated trademark could have the similar meaning with the original one, literal translation can be used. Take P&G’s cosmetics “COVERGIRL”, which is literately translated into “封面女郎”, as an example. The name “COVERGIRL” comes from the beautiful girl on the cover of international fashion magazines, and it is a best-selling in America. When it comes into