International Advertising Translation and Cultural Differences : a Case of Studying Advertising Slogans and Their Persian Translation

Today, international communication has got a great significance for people around the world. Societies are more concerned with the positive and beneficial relations with other nations. It seems that the need for interrelationship with other communities is moving the world towards globalization. In such a world, 'advertising' is looked upon as a handy instrument to call for others' attention. In an international context 'translation' plays the role of an intermediate, bridging the gap between the advertiser and the advertisee. The present study is trying to look into international advertising from a cultural point of view, i.e. how advertising slogans are treated in a culturally different setting. It is, further, going to investigate how advertising slogans and their corresponding Persian translations are different in terms of rhetorical figures and how the translators deal with cultural obstacles when translating. For this purpose, a selection of English advertisements of various product brands was made by the researcher. 10 MA students of University of Isfahan, majoring in Translation Studies were required to translate the provided advertisement slogans. Their translations were observed for the type of rhetorical figures utilized and their strategies to handle the cultural barriers. The findings of the study show that Ambiguity is the rhetorical figure that occurred dominantly in the Persian translations. However, in the original English advertisement slogans Pronouns were favored the most. The tendency of translations was mostly toward being acceptability-oriented rather than accuracy-oriented.