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  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

admin2009-04-23  43
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 "nova", 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 ranslation" 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.
选项 A、the promotion slogan
B、the marketing strategy
C、the secret recipe
D、the pleasant taste
答案A
解析 本文讨论的是文化差异造成的翻译失误，从文中所举的例子可以知道，原文第4段和第5段讲的都是跨国公司的广告口号的翻译，另外，原文catch phrase后的finger licking food只是一个短语，该段讨论的是这个短语的翻译，因此选项A是最贴切的理解。本文讨论的重点是文化对翻译的影响，举的例子只涉及一些品名和广告标语的翻译，并不涉及市场策略这个宽泛的问题，因此选项B不正确；选项C和D涉及的是事物的实质多于文字的表述，但原文的catch phrase应该是一种说法或文字的表述，因此这两个选项不能代替原文catch phrase的意思。
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