Sociocultural persuasion in advertising: Considerations for translators.

Abstract

This thesis discusses how sociocultural meaning is layered into the rhetorical structure of advertising and illustrates how an ad's meaning achieves its goal of persuading consumers to buy a specific product. Its aim is to deepen translators' understanding of the advertising genre and elaborate a theoretical base that can help them make decisions about composing the translation specifically for the target culture. The key elements of translating advertising, namely the importance of its persuasive function, its cultural groundwork, and its communicative unity, are determined through a survey of translation literature. The recurrence of communicative variables such as the addresser-addressee relationship, intention, and purpose is furthered in an investigation of the rhetorical structure of print advertisements. A framework that describes the layering of ideologemes, values, and beliefs in persuasive language, through stereotypes and cliches, is proposed to improve translators' understanding of advertisements. This framework is then applied to four in-depth analyses of ads and their translations. Observations include translators' misunderstanding of the rhetorical importance of the textual and visual unity in ads and the importance of cliches as pivotal logical devices and carriers of sociocultural meaning.