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 proce ss
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.