浅谈今日商标翻译中存在的问题.docVIP

With more and more foreign products flooding into China and Chinese products exported abroad, trademark translation has become an increasingly significant part of marketing strategy. A well-translated trademark will help attract customers and inspire their enthusiasm for purchase; while a trademark translated improperly sometimes will bring negative effects or even lead to spoilage of the image of the product. In today’s market, we can find a lot of ingeniously translated trademarks, but we should also be aware of some problems in trademark translation. Through analyzing those problems and giving possible suggestions, this paper holds that only a customer-oriented translation will succeed in the market. 1. Problems in Chinese-English trademark translation It seems to me that many Chinese manufacturers have not fully realized the importance of trademark translation. Some translated trademarks of their products reflect an attitude of irresponsibility and rashness of translators. They have not realized that with such an attitude they may lose many potential customers. 1.1 Trademarks without translation English or pinyin version of trademarks will be useful in attracting foreign customers. To my surprise, many China-made products have no English version of their trademarks at all, even without pinyin! I was confused when I saw among them some famous brands such as “步步高”, “两面针”, “脑白金” and “立白”. Why these enterprises are so ‘shy’ to put the English version on the products? How can this kind of products attract those foreigners who do not know Chinese? I don’ think it is a wise practice in today’s domestic or overseas market. 1.2 Improper translation Transliteration, literal translation and semantic transliteration, i.e., “a combination of phonetic transcription and semantic manipulation” (Hu Qingping, 2001, p.28) are three most commonly used approaches in trademark translation. However, not all the trademarks translated into English or pinyin are successful. Actuall