This thesis investigates the advertising strategies used in marketing cars in Italy and the UK, with particular reference to the employment of translation. Fieldwork has been undertaken within advertising agencies, with a view to establishing how translation is used, whether translators in the industry are professionally trained and how significant translation is generally maintained to be. The role of advertising agencies in both contexts has been considered in terms of their development over time and their cultural prominence. A qualitative analysis of a corpus of Italian and British car advertisements from the 1980s to the present has been undertaken, with the aim of determining how car advertisements have changed across two decades, during which advertising techniques have tended to become more complex and both societies have undergone significant changes. This is particularly apparent with regard to issues of gender representation and the balance between verbal and visual text. The analysis of the corpus focuses on the use of translation. It is suggested that car advertisements, as cultural products, are reconstituted and rewritten when translated, so that advertisements of the same product tend to be very different across cultures, both in terms of textual content and visuals. Investigating the cultural value of advertisements demonstrates the continuing tension between perceptions of what is termed ‘mechanical translation’ and ‘creative rewriting’ as well as the social and economic value ascribed to each in marketing discourses. The general aim of the thesis is to establish the involvement of translation in economic and cultural exchanges within which advertising plays a part. It is argued that despite what advertising professionals appear to believe, the cultural and economic impact of advertising is assisted by translation, which plays a significant role in the transmission of information and values.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:582283 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Nardi, Valeria |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/56796/ |
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