Advertising Slogans

The scopes of this research were to analyze the semiotic and cultural aspects of 30 English and Persian advertising slogans of various brands and also to reveal the functions of advertising elements used in the advertising teasers. The slogans were sampled for the analysis on the random basis from the internet sources. The writer used descriptive qualitative method to describe and analyze the semiotic elements; objects; verbal and nonverbal dimensions of advertisements. The semiotic model used in this analysis was Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic framework. The researcher identified the frequency of cultural and advertising elements used in the advertising slogans in order to illustrate the techniques used by the companies. The findings of the present research indicated that among the advertising elements, shots, color, and music were used more in the 15 English advertising teasers, but in 15 Persian advertising teasers, shots and color were used more than the other advertising elements. In addition, the functions of semiotic and cultural elements in advertising are as follows: they convey the messages more vividly and comprehensively, facilitate the communication between the advertisers and audiences, indicate the truths and facts in a different way, evoke the awareness and conscience of people in order to help others, convey a piece of information about the advertisement, make reference to a concrete or imaginary reality associated with the values of the advertised product or service, and build a bridge for social groups and various communities.

Considering globalization, advertisement translation has turned into an important issue in the field of translation studies, yet it is a rather difficult and challenging job for translators to overcome cultural, social, and ideological differences present in advertisements. With regards to this fact, the present study is designed with the aim of investigating advertisement translation from the perspective of Relevance Theory, an uprising pragmatic theory that provides a unified account of translation. For this purpose, a sample of 10 English advertising slogans, along with their Persian translations were selected from among the slogans available on the Internet. The collected sample was analyzed critically on the grounds of Relevance Theory’s concepts and principles, proposed by Sperber and Wilson (1995). In the process of analyzing the data, Gutt’s (2000) theory of translation, which is based on the application of Relevance Theory to translation, was also brought into focus. Hence, the translators’ choices were justified based on the main tenets of Relevance Theory, and it was observed that in most of the examples, the translations adhered to the principles of Relevance Theory; in Gutt’s terms, the translated slogans interpretively resembled the originals. So, most of the translations were successful advertisements in appealing to the target audience. The findings of the present study gave evidence for the fact that Relevance Theory can be an appropriate approach for evaluating translations, especially in the realm of advertisement translation.