Abstract:
This study investigates the conventions and constraints involved in the process
of translating advertising texts from English into Arabic. It starts by exploring
the current conventions and techniques of advertising in the Arab World. A
number of Arabic advertisements chosen from various Arabic magazines is
analysed in order to identify dominant forms and conventions, and the impact
of advertisements on women`s lives. The analysis identifies a range of
interesting techniques used in Arabic advertising today, such as switching
between Standard and Colloquial Arabic, the use of certain rhetorical devices
such as parallelism, the use of congratulatory settings, testimonials and the
mixing of genres. A model for analysis is then established by presenting and
discussing different approaches. The proposed model is applied to original
English and Arabic advertisements in order to show how the various elements
of the model play a role in delivering advertising messages. Finally, the model
is applied to English advertisements and their Arabic translations in order to
investigate the strategies and constraints involved in the process. The analysis
reveals that certain strategies are used frequently by translators or localisers in
the Arab World. These include: covering the bodies of semi-naked female
models or replacing them or the contexts they appear in with more local
elements, adding or underlining elements of newness or originality in the
Arabic version, transliterating brand names, modifying headings and slogans or
creating new ones. The study further suggests that there are certain marketing
constraints which motivate the translator or localiser to abandon or radically
modify the format of the source text. These constraints include the publishing
of English advertisements in different formats which are not easily available in
the Arabic context, and the need to include local details in the Arabic versions
which are not provided and not related to the English texts
