Impacts of Cultural Biases on the International Advertising Translation

Abstract

The translator's role is, by definition, to transfer the linguistic and iconic meanings of the text from one language to another, but during the translation process the translator's attitudes, judgments, prejudices... come into play. These are cultural biases linked to the socio-cultural context in which he was raised. Therefore, we can say that the translator's cultural biases largely affect, on the one hand, the production of the text; and on the other hand, the process of the receiver’s involvement in the construction of the meaning of the message. Thus, the translator is given a great deal of leeway to fill in the gaps and spaces in the original text. On the other hand, the reader's knowledge and cognitive faculties allow him to give interpretations to the received text. In this article, we have shown to what extent the cultural biases of both the translator and the reader impact the production of meaning in the advertising text. The object of the study is a corpus of advertising messages of international  brands. The methodology adopted is based on an analytical and  comparative approach that  allows us to shed light on the main manifestations of these biases, as well as the problems and pitfalls that the translator faces when transferring the meaning of the texts in the original language into the target language.