2. 外语
  3. The increase in global trade means that international companies cannot afford to make costly advertising mistakes if they want t

The increase in global trade means that international companies cannot afford to make costly advertising mistakes if they want t

admin2013-05-04  75
问题     The increase in global trade means that international companies cannot afford to make costly advertising mistakes if they want to be competitive. Understanding the language and culture of target markets in foreign countries is one of the keys to successful international marketing. Too many companies, however, have jumped into foreign markets with embarrassing results. Translation mistakes are at the heart of many blunders in international advertising.
    General Motors, the US auto manufacturer, got a costly lesson when it introduced its Chevrolet Nova to the Puerto Rican market. "Nova" is Latin for "new (star)" and means "star" in many languages, but in spoken Spanish it can sound like "no va", meaning "it doesn’t go". Few people wanted to buy a car with that cursed meaning. When GM changed the name to Caribe, sales picked up dramatically.
    Marketing blunders have also been made by food and beverage companies. One American food company’s friendly "Jolly Green Giant" (for advertising vegetables) became something quite different when it was translated into Arabic as "Intimidating Green Ogre".
    When translated into German, Pepsi’s popular slogan, "Come Alive with Pepsi" came out implying "Come Alive from the Grave". No wonder customers in Germany didn’t rush out to buy Pepsi.
    Even a company with an excellent international track record like Kentucky Fried Chicken is not immune to the perils of faulty translation. Many sales were lost when the catch phrase "finger licking food" became "eat with your fingers off" in Chinese translation.
    A manufacturer of one laundry detergent also made an expensive mistake in the Middle East. Its advertisements showed a picture of a pile of dirty clothes on the left, a box of the company’s detergent in the middle, and clean clothes on the right. Unfortunately, the message was incorrectly interpreted because most people looked at it from right to left, the way Arabic is read.
    Having awakened to the special nature of foreign advertising, companies are becoming much more conscientious in their translation and more sensitive to cultural distinctions. The best way to prevent errors is to hire professional translators who understand the target language and its idiomatic usage, or to use a technique called "back translation" to reduce the possibility of blunders. The process uses one person to translate a message into the target language and another to translate it back. Effective translators aim to capture the overall message of an advertisement because a word-for-word duplication of the original rarely conveys the intended meaning and often causes misunderstandings.  
Which of the following does the author most probably agree about the translation mistakes?
选项 A、Many international companies make translation mistakes in advertising.
B、Translation mistakes have the worst impact on a company’s marketing.
C、Translation mistakes are made due to the translators’ ignorance of cultural distinctions.
D、Word-for-word translation should be abandoned in order to avoid translation mistakes.
答案C
解析 从全文举的例子来看，作者想要说明广告翻译要注重文化差异。另外，在末段的结论部分。首句提到现在广告公司对文化差异更敏感了，这就暗示作者认为以前广告公司不注意文化差异而造成了翻译的失误，由此可见，选项C为本题答案。
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