On September 30, the International Translator's Day, the first meeting of the permanent student scientific club "Philology", dedicated to the peculiarities of translation of advertising messages and slogans, was held at the Faculty of Humanities of the National University "Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic".
The club members under the guidance of Anna Pavelieva, Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor of Germanic Philology and Translation, learned more about the semantic equivalents used by professional translators expressing the main idea of when verbs are imperative. Students and lecturers discussed in which cases they leave the slogan without translation, why translators of advertising texts rarely resort to literal or verbal translation and what stylistic techniques are used to preserve the imagery of the original phrase in the target language and so on.
During the meeting, bachelor's and master's students tried to translate lexical repetitions (anadiplosis, anaphora, symploce and epiphora) in practice, and a permanent member of the group – undergraduate student Maryna Sliusarenko presented to the students her own research of the peculiarities of translation from English into Ukrainian well-known advertising slogans.
The topic of the first meeting was chosen by young scientists not by chance, since the art of translating promotional materials must be studied, and practical skills gained must be improved. Advertising is a combination of a graphic element or a photo image with verbal text of different lengths, from a short title to an expanded main text. The verbal part of the advertising text has an internal structure. As a rule, it is a headline, the main advertising text and the slogan. Mass production of goods around the world is accompanied by advertising campaigns based on advertising slogans. After all, no matter how attractive the image of the product is, it is the slogan that buyers involuntarily memorize from commercials. The language appeal of the "advanced" brand is the subtleties of professional translation from the original language.
"When it comes to foreign goods, the huge responsibility falls on the shoulders of the translator, who, despite the complexity of source language and target language, must convey all the figurativeness and conciseness of the advertising slogan, including its cultural features. Therefore, the translation of the slogan should be original, easy to remember and attention-grabbing, for which the translator needs to solve a number of issues of semantics and sociolinguistics", - said the head of the club, PhD, Associate Professor of Germanic Philology and Translation of the National University "Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic" Anna Pavelieva.
According to the lecturer, the translation of advertising is currently allocated to a separate area of a professional translator activity, which requires ideal knowledge of stylistic subtleties and cultural nuances of the Ukrainian and English languages and understanding of consumer psychology.
"One of the main features of the translation of advertising texts is expressed in the meaningful relationship between the original and the translation, as well as in the transfer of sociolinguistic aspects of the translated text. To achieve adequacy, it is often necessary to adapt both the content of the text and its form, which is often a compromise. Many peculiarities of translation are related to the specifics of languages (English or Ukrainian). For example, in the process of translation there may be a replacement of the objection to the statement (antonymous translation), which in turn may also have the opposite function. Techniques such as tracing, compensation of lexical losses, replacement of the verb from active to passive and vice versa, and transfer of phraseological units by their semantic equivalents, etc.," – commented Maryna Sliusarenko, the permanent member of the club, a master's student.
Advertising texts and slogans are extremely rarely translated verbatim, as in most cases word-for-word translation does not fully convey the meaning, mood and presentation. The same phrase translated into another language may have other semantic shades that change its perception by buyers.
Therefore, it is important for the translator not only to translate the text, but also to conduct its sociolinguistic adaptation or creative translation/transcreation, because the translator, in fact, re-creates the meaning of advertising text, and it is important that the translated text conveys meaning and mood. At the same time, if marketers use puns and equivoques, rhyming, consonances of individual words or double meanings of phrases. It significantly complicates the translation of the advertising slogan, because in such cases, 100% accurate translation becomes impossible.
"It was interesting to learn about such a common translation technique as "lack of translation", which is used when translating advertising products that perform a purely appellate function, such as perfumes or alcoholic beverages. A peculiar discovery for me was the fact that the most common method of translation is direct translation. It should be used carefully, because it least takes into account the peculiarities of the culture of the language of translation," – said a sophomore student of the Faculty of Humanities Oleksandra Datsenko.
The members of the scientific club will definitely use the received language cases and practical life hacks from translation in their future professional activity and scientific research of advertising campaigns of well-known Ukrainian and world brands.
Earlier, a lecturer philologist underwent the training in media literacy in Leipzig, and a scientist of the Faculty of Humanities studied new techniques of teaching the Polish language.
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National University “Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic”
