Brand Name Translation in China

An Overview of Practice and Theory. - Babel. 2003. 49 (2). P. 131-148.Brand names are an important part of advertising language, whose translation plays a critical role in international marketing practice, but somehow neglected with very little literature on this topic. This paper, by giving a detailed account of translating Chinese character brand names into English, attempts to study the practice and theory of translating brand names in China from a linguistic, cultural, marketing, and legal point of view.
Two stages are summarized which can be roughly set before and after the Reforming and Opening of China in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and four approaches are identified which include Pinyin, literal translation, transliteration and coining, illustrating the develop- ment of translation theory and marketing science in China.
In this paper, the authors put forward the process of brand name translation, require- ments for translators of brand names and the criteria for ideal translated brand names, which, in the authors’ opinion, not only apply to translation of brand names from Chinese to English, but also apply to translation of brand names from other languages to Chinese.