INVESTIGATING TRANSLATION OF ENGLISH ADVERTISING SLOGANS INTO VIETNAMESE

Abstract

Advertising slogans can be seen everywhere in this world, from smaller cities to bigger ones and as more and more businesses have been run, a plethora of brands have been introduced. However, many companies in the world now have found their way out of their host countries and wish to do business in other potential countries. When they do this, they need language assistance to advertise their products. Due to this language importance to promote sales, this study aimed to explore twelve advertising slogans related to skin, hair protection, food, beverages and other common brands that are prevalent in Vietnam to see how the English slogans of the brands were translated into Vietnamese. The authors used the translation perspectives proposed by Nida (1991) to help direct the analysis. The result uncovered that the majority of the translated texts did not apply the philological and linguistic perspectives, but instead they were translated based on the Skopos theory, meaning they translated the slogans to purposefully persuade people to purchase the products. This study ignored the communicative perspective as the authors could not record extra-linguistic features such as sounds to insert the effect on buyers. Some proposed suggestions for further studies were also included. 

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