This thesis draws critically on approaches to globalisation, translation and
advertising to analyse current translation practices using multimodal advertising
texts. The purpose of this study is both to show evidence of the need to
approach advertising translation from an interdisciplinary and intersemiotic
perspective, and to remark on the need to incorporate such an approach into
translation training and practice. It is developed in the broader context of
globalisation and its impacts on socio-economic changes and cultural
interaction worldwide. The intensification of global communications together
with technological advances enhance the steady flow of knowledge and
information, whilst at the same time there is a tendency to accentuate
commonalities between cultures, clearly illustrated by standardised strategies
used in global advertising campaigns.
However, one key obstacle in the spread of standardised messages is language
diversity, something that has caused translation to gain an active role in global
advertising since it facilitates dialogue between global companies and
international consumers; thus, translation has not only become an activity that
overcomes linguistic and cultural barriers but also a commercial tool. This thesis
focuses on the translation of advertisements as an intentional communication
act that involves a team process into which translation may be integrated.
Translation encompasses concepts that go beyond linguistic matters such as
contextual issues and extralinguistic communication sign systems. The
translation of advertisements is a growing area of study, with current research
mainly limited to the study of linguistic matters. Consequently, in order to
improve the accuracy and effectiveness of multimodal translations (text and
images in this study) in a professional context, this research incorporates
concepts and knowledge from visual analysis and advertising.
This thesis suggests a multimodal method of analysis consisting of different
phases integrating visual analysis as a part of the translation process. The
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proposed methodology is illustrated by a corpus of Spanish-English pairs of
standardised print advertisements from the beauty and cosmetics sector. The
conclusion is that it is vital to consider the extralinguistic aspects surrounding a
multimodal text from both a descriptive and critical perspective in order to read
connotative information from words, images and the text-image unit. Translation
training might also benefit from including this multimodal approach and further
collaborative work must be done between translators and marketers to better
understand and consolidate the role of translation in this area.