27(2) - 2015

A preliminary investigation of textual strategies to enhance audience memory in advertisement translation – With reference to English-Chinese translation

Ying Cui

Title

A preliminary investigation of textual strategies to enhance audience memory in advertisement translation –With reference to English-Chinese translation

Abstract

To enhance audience memory plays an important role for an advertisement or its translation to realize the function of promoting a product or service. Accordingly, exploring the textual strategies to increase the memorability of an advertisement will be productive for translators. Studies on audience memory in advertisement translation are rare and this paper provides a preliminary research on the textual strategies that are supposed to be able to enhance audience memory, based on the findings of psychological studies, especially empirical studies on human memory and human needs. Referring to such investigations, the researcher has summarized four principles to strengthen text receivers’ memory, namely focus, specificity, personal reference, and creativity. With reference to these four principles, specific textual strategies have been summarized in this study which can be applied in advertisement translation, including the use of repetitions, the provision of details, the application of personal pronouns, and the design of rhetorical figures. The application of these strategies in Chinese-English advertisement translation is discussed via a case study to demonstrate how the strategies are handled in translation and provide reference for translators working in this field.

Keywords

Advertisement, memory, strategy, textual, translation

October 18, 2015
  27(2) - 2015