Advertising in translation: the translation of cosmetics and perfume advertisements into Portuguese

Abstract

Cross-cultural communication has acquired particular significance in contemporary societies, where the world-wide traffic of people, goods and ideas, which has impacted upon social and cultural values, raises debates over globalisation issues. Translation plays a crucial role in these interchanges, by mediating the socio-cultural contacts between different language communities. The present study aims to look into the translation of advertisements that cross borders, and that are part of the cross-cultural flow. It will attempt to describe and discuss the translation strategies employed in the translation of perfume and cosmetics print advertisements in to Portuguese.F or this purpose, a selection of English and Portuguese advertisements of the major brands of these products has been made, so as to (a) outline the main translation approaches adopted in the translation into Portuguese, (b) compare them to the major approaches adopted in English advertisements of the same type, (c) discuss major issues in translation studies raised by the specificity of international advertising, and (d) infer some of the (cultural) factors conditioning these options. This analysis will consider the different constitutive dimensions of these multimodal messages, namely pictorial and verbal elements, the combination of which is believed to influence the translational approaches and processes. This study also seeks to demonstrate that discursive features and translation strategies a re-connected with the societies they are part of and hence both affect and reflect the existing cultural conditions and power relations. This view of discursive practices, particularly translation, as part of the wide cultural system, has required an approach that draws on different disciplines, namely discourse and serniotic analysis, media studies in advertising and international marketing, as well as studies in translation