诺德的功能理论在商标翻译中的应用伦文

Nord’s Functionalism in Trademark Translation
Meng Dan
Class 5, Grade 2003, Department of Foreign Language, Shaoyang University


Abstract:　With the rapid development of economy and culture, more and more attention is being attracted to the trademark translation. But the achievements of the previously traditional translation theories can’t be adapted to direct the trademark translation in the new situation. Commodity economy's fast development and globalization require a new theory to guide trademark translation.
This thesis has four parts to discuss functionalism in trademark translation. Part One introduces features of trademark translation. Part Two introduces Nord’s functionalism. Part Three discusses why functionalism combined with trademark translation. Part Four displays some examples of excellent trademark translations that are integrated with functionalism and bad examples.
Key Words: Nord; functionalism ; trademark translation

【摘要】随着经济和文化的快速发展，商标名称的翻译越来越受到人们的重视。但是先前传统的翻译理论成果已经不再适合指导新情况下的商标翻译。商品经济的发展和全球一体化需求新的理论来引导商标翻译。
    本文分四大部分讨论了商标翻译中的功能理论。第一部分介绍了商标翻译的特征；第二部分介绍了诺德的功能理论；第三部分阐述功能理论为什么与商标翻译相结合；第四部分举出一些优秀的商标翻译与功能理论相结合的例子，指出功能理论的优点，以及在功能理论指导下而产生的糟糕的商标翻译。
【关键词】诺德；功能理论；商标翻译






Introduction
With the fast development of economy and increasing of international trade, more and more merchants pay attention to market in China and abroad. Meanwhile, a lot of international companies want to enlarge sales in China. So trademark translation can't be ignored in the competitive market. The trademark is used to differentiate various merchandises and evoke consumers to purchase products. It is a tool to gain benefit. Famous brand means popularity and high price.
Trademark translation has great affection on product's fortune. Firstly and most importantly, a trademark translation promotes sales. Top-brand products can attract a large number of faithful customers. This is an advantage that benefits both their manufactures and sellers incalculably. Secondly, the establishment of a trademark or its translation helps the management of selling and the resolution of customer-concerning problems. Thirdly, a well-built name either translated or not, helps to establish the image of a company. The name and its translation play the role of publicity and help to build a good reputation. Fourthly, a registered trademark is protected by law, which helps to maintain the interests of companies concerned and fight against forgery. Finally, a trademark is an invisible constituent of industrial capital.
This thesis discusses functionalism in trademark translation. It not only discourses on advantages of functionalism but also dissertates its disadvantages. It helps us to know functionalism and realize that we should use functionalism to guide trademark translation more efficiently.

1 Language Features of Trademark Translation

1.1 Easy to Read and Remember
That a trademark is easy to read and remember is a basic requirement of a perfect trademark translation. The initial function of a trademark is recognition and spreading function. A good trademark should make consumers differentiate the product easily by its name from similar products. When giving or translating a trademark, we should make sure it is easy to be recognized, spelled, readed and remembered. “Sony” and “ Kodak” are such good examples. Their Chinese translations “索尼” and “柯达”also follow the principle of easiness. Japanese company name “Sony” was created by two combined words: “sonus” in Latin which is the root of such a word as “sound” and “sonic”. And “sonny” means “little son”. So the two words are combined to show a small group of youth who have the energy and passion toward unlimited creation.

1.2 Favorable Meaning to Customer
A successful trademark usually contains some favorable meaning, e.g. “Safeguard” and “康佳”. This name means this soap can protect consumers’ skin. Certainly, it becomes consumers’ favorable product. Everyone knows that watching TV for a long time is bad for health. But “康佳” makes people believe that this kind of TV does not harm consumers’ health. Naturally it is popular to consumers. Trademark’s translation should accord with semantic feature.
However, there are exceptions like “Poision” and “傻瓜”which can be considered creative. “Poision” is the trademark of a famous perfume. It is translated into “毒药” in Chinese. This is an excellent example of literal translation. “毒药” means a kind of medicine that harms the people’s health in Chinese. However, “毒药” is chosen to as the translated trademark of a perfume has several reasons as following:
Firstly, “毒药” is unique as a name of perfume. It can attract consumers’ attention. Secondly, “毒药” has the connotation: When women use it, they will become very charming and make their favorite men fall in love with them.
Above reasons tell us that “Poision” is translated into “毒药” is favorable to consumers.
“Intelligent” is a perfect trademark of a camera in America. But in China, it is translated into “傻瓜”. “傻瓜” means foolish in Chinese. Maybe some people believe that “傻瓜” is better than “聪明” as the translated trademark of this camera. Because first of all, “傻瓜” amazes people and a attracts more consumer’s attention. Moreover, “傻瓜” also tells consumers this camera can be operated conveniently. Even foolish can use it easily. Certainly, consumers would like to purchase this camera that not only has good quality but also has a unique name.

1.3 Imaginative to Arouse the Customers
A trademark and its translation must have some profundity and make consumers to relate it to nice imaginations. “Nestle” and its Chinese translation “雀巢”both arouse a family or material warm.

2 Nord’s Functionalism in Trademark Translation
"Functionalism" Means focusing on the functions of texts or translations (Nord, 2001:1). Functionalism is a broad term for various theories that study translation on the basis of functions among which functionalism plays a major role in the development of translation. Of course, functional theory did not come into being all of a sudden, therefore we need a brief description of its development in order to trace out its principles.
Christinane Nord believes that functionalism can be used in trademark translation. But rather than satisfied with the simple conclusion, she tries to find out the ways by which functionalism approach can be employed in trademark translation. From her point of view, compared with the translation of other texts, trademark translation bears some differences. The study of functionalism in trademark translation should take them into consideration. Therefore, Nord begins her research by analyzing the actional aspects of trademark translation such as the sender, translator and receiver, trying to find out the features that distinguish trademark translation from other translations.
When discussing the relationship between the sender’s intention and the text, Nord elicits her first supposition: “the target receiver takes translator’s interpretation for the intention of the sender” (Nord, 2001). Through thorough analysis of the translation process, she points out that in trademark translation, split responsibility can be found: “ the sender provides the intention and the translator tries to infer and verbalize that intention” ( Nord, 2001). The first step to translate the trademark work is to understand the source text and infer the sender’s intention. Due to ambiguous code elements and vagueness typical of texts, a variety of interpretations are allowed. Given this situation, what is actually translated is not the sender’s intention but the translator’s interpretation of the sender’s intention. The target receiver, however, may be unaware of reading text thus accept the translation as a manifestation of the sender’s intention.
As for the relation between the sender’s intention and the receiver’s expectation, Nord puts forward the second supposition: “the function of the translated text is based on the interpretation of the sender’s intention and on the target-cultural background knowledge and expectation of the target receivers” (Nord, 2001). She explains that when producing a text, the text producer must take account of factors such as the consumers’ world and cultural knowledge, their emotivity, their social-cultural environment. In the ideal situation, translator anticipates consumers’ background knowledge correctly and succeeds in verbalizing their intention in the text. Then text function and the sender’s intention may be identical. In a translated text, such identity requires more conditions. As Nord states, firstly, the translator needs to interpret the sender’s intention correctly. Secondly, the translator should succeed in verbalizing this interpretation in such a way that it can be interpreted correctly by target receivers. Lastly, the background knowledge and expectation of the source-text addressees and the target addressees are identical or have been made to match by the translator (Nord, 2001).

3 Combination of Trademark Translation and Functionalism
The author of this paper holds that trademark translation should be combined with functionalism. The reasons are as follows:

3.1 Traditional Translation Theory Can't Direct Trademark Translation Well
Traditional translation generally has two methods: literal translation and free translation. Literal translation can be defined in linguistic terms as a translation “made on a level lower than is sufficient to convey the content unchanged while oberving TL norms” (Backhudarov, 1969). In a similar vein Catford also offers a definition bases on the notion of the UNIT OF TRANSLATION: he argues that literal translation takes word-for-word translation as its starting point, although because of the necessity of conforming to TL grammar, the final TT may also display group-group or clause-clause EQUIVALENCE (1965).
So it accords with target language's custom and can be understood by consumers. However, this method sometimes can't be used well in trademark translation. Because trademark translation is a kind of integrative translation. Trademark translation emphasizes the effect of sales. It requires translation consider many factors that will affect the sales such as difference of cultures, customs, consumers' psychology, aesthetic sense etc. It is a pity that literal translation can't satisfy trademark translation's requirements. Free translation only requires translation express source text's meaning and translation should be fluent.
A type of translation in which more attention is paid to producing a naturally reading TT than to preserving the ST wording intact; also known as SENSE-FOR-SENCE TRANSLATION, it contrasts with LITERAL and WORD-FOR-WORD TRANSLATION. Linguistically it can be defined as a translation “made on a level higher than is necessary to convey the content unchanged while observing TL norms” (Barkhudarov, 1969). In other words, the UNIT OF TRANSLATION in a free translation might be anything up to a sentence (or more) even if the content of the ST in question could be reproduced satisfactorily by translating on the word or group level. Furthermore, according to Catford it is a prerequisite of free translation that they should also be UNBOUNDED (1965) as regards the rank (or level) on which they are performed. Free translations are thus generally more “TL-oriented” than literal translations.
Literal translation and free translation only emphasize the form and meaning. Either of them can't satisfy the demands of commodity economy. Due to the fast development of commodity economy, trademark translation must always satisfy consumer's new requirements. Therefore, it needs a kind of theory which can direct the trademark translation to reach its business purpose.
Following are principles of trademark translation.
1) Translation must be loyal to source text.
2) Translation should respect cultural differences and grasp consumers’ psychology.
3) Translation should be coherent and easy to be understood by consumers.
From the definition of the literal translation and free translation, we can tell that stated above these traditional translation methods can not meet the requirement for trademark translation. Therefore, the author of this paper thinks it is proper to use functionalism to translate the trademarks.

3.2 Functionalism Guides Trademark Translation in Practice As a Proper Theory
In the practice of trademark translation, translators are doing recreative work. Due to the affection of two different languages, cultures, consumer psychology, customs and other factors, the translator need use functionalism to direct trademark translation.
Under the guiding of functionalism, translator can use different translation strategies to translate good trademark that express products' connotation, conveying information and considering customs. Functionalism has three basic rules: skopos rule; intratextual rule or coherence rule; intertextule rule or fidelity rule. These rules have common views with trademark translation principles that are introduced above. So functionalism is a proper theory which can guide trademark translation better than traditonal translation theory.

3.3 Differences Between Traditional Translation Theory and Functionalism
1) Functionalism is a kind of top-down translation. Traditional translation theory is a kind of bottom-up translation. Functionalism can predict the sales foreground.
2) Functionalist believes translation standard is "adequacy", but traditional theory believes translation standard is "equivalence".
3) Functionalism differentiates translation competence and linguistic competence. However traditional theory only emphasizes linguistic competence.
4) Traditional translation theory lacks method theory. It is not easy to be operated. Functionalism is a method theory which bases on figure speech's functional equivalence. It has strong use and operation in translation practice.

3.4 Functionalism Approaches to Trademark Translation                           
Functionalism approaches are the application of functional theory to trademark translation practice. Claiming itself to be a general or universal translation rule, functional theory has not yet introduced specific translation methods. What the theory emphasizes is the intended function and the anticipated effects of the target text in the target situation, context and culture. The realization of the intended functions takes priority over the reader's comprehension of the target text. Any source-language text being a novel, a scientific research paper or an advertisement, fulfills one or several functions in the source-language context and culture. When the initiator starts a translation activity, he naturally hopes that the translation will be able to has its function in the target language.
The translation of trademark, dealing with a special type of source text, is particularly function-oriented. The informative, directive, stimulative and persuasive functions should be taken into full consideration by the translator in the translating process.
All the functions, from the sender's starting point, should serve the purpose of sales promotion. Besides, as these functions are so tightly related to the response of consumers, consumer psychology should also be taken into account when we are dealing with trademarks. Otherwise, the translation will not be able to fulfill their intended functions since the receivers can not cooperate.
In most cases of trademark translations, the traditional procedures like literal translation, transliteration, loan translation, modulation, adaptation and so on can fulfill the assigned task. While in other cases, creativity seems more necessary and a better choice. Whichever procedure is being used, the translator should be always mind the target-text functions and consumer psychology as well. He should relate his translation with consumer needs, motives and expectations. He should also evaluate the actual performance of his translation among the addressees and judge whether the intended functions can be best achieved or not. Since trademark language is so socially conditioned, it is the translator's duty to make his translation more accessible to the reader and better serve the realization of the intended functions.

4 Examples of Functionalism Combined with Trademark Translation

4.1 Excellent Trademark Translation Combined with Functionalism
Gold Lion’s original meaning is gold lion. It’s the king of all animals in American and English culture. It makes people has this imagination: power, bravery. So Gold Lion has become the stand of “Men’s World”. However, “狮” and  “失” have the same pronunciation. Chinese people believe it stands for “unlucky”. So people translated “gold” into “金”， “lion” into “利来”. Translated name “金利来” adopts half pronunciation and half meaning translation way. This translated name gives people good imagination “Gold and profit run into pocket like water”. This translation way accords with Chinese traditional business culture. “Uni” in Unilevel was translated into “联合” and “level” was translated into  “利华”. The translated name “联合利华” stands for “China cooperates with foreign countries is good for the development of China”. This brand is popular with Chinese people. It’s also easy to enter into Chinese market.