1.Introduction 1.1 Research background Under the circumstances of economic globalization and fierce market competition, advertising has been playing an indispensable role in today#8217;s international commercial activities. ”Advertising, more over, not only influence any human society in which it is widespread but also reflects certain aspects of that society#8217;s structure.”(Peter Trudgill, 1985) In the meantime, advertising translation is also important in bridging the connections between domestic and international markets. Domestic and foreign enterprises are both likely to give their non-native target consumers a better introduction of their advertising products. China#8217;s reform and opening up to the outside world have contributed a lot to its rapid development in economy, which leads to, eventually, tremendous growth in China#8217;s advertising industry at an unprecedented speed. Advertising has penetrated into every aspect of China#8217;s social life. The integration of world economy, China#8217;s entry to WTO and the growth of the Internet and other information communication technologies, all these make it possible for cross-cultural communications of international advertising. International advertising translation is of great importance for China#8217;s enterprises to deal with the challenges of economic globalization and to broaden the international market so that made-in-China products can have a seat in the world market. 1.2 Need for the study As a language for special purpose, advertising language has its unique stylistic characteristics, which determines that advertising translation should have its own principles, criteria and approaches. Language is the carrier of culture. Advertising language is also embedded in its own specific culture. Advertising translation is a cross-lingual, cross-cultural communication interaction. Therefore, advertising translation should meet the requirements of the cultural properties of the advertising languages. Advertising translation is distinct from literary translation and other translations because of its specific commercial purpose, which determines the supreme status of the target customers and the target culture. As an important part of international marketing strategy, the overwhelming function of advertising is to promote sales. Therefore, the criteria to judge an effective translation is whether it can best serve the purpose of advertising. ” The ends justifies the methods”, translations that can best help promote sales in the target cultural environment are good translations. Free translation, literal translation, domestication and foreignization are all accessible to achieve the purpose of advertisements. 2.Literature review Advertising creation and communication are closely related to cultures. A lot of experts who have paid great attention to advertising translation have agreed with each other on one significant point: ”What poses major obstacles for efficient translations is not only the language but primarily cross-cultural unawareness.”(Jettmarova/Piotrowska/Zauberga, 1997) Therefore, advertising translation is inevitably linked to cultural factors, which actually make advertising translation more complicated. Ignorance on the cultural factors always contributes to mistakes in translations and is harmful to marketing communication. By contrast, adequate translation is not only beneficial to marketing communication but also leads to widespread cultural communications over the world. As a matter of fact, advertising is a form of communication while the nature of translation is communication or cultural communication. That is to say, what advertising translation achieves is the significance of cultural communication. There are three typical translation strategies in relation to culture, including domestication, foreignization and creative translation, which are essential to the cultural communication of advertising translation. Cultural communication through advertising translation makes a great difference to target language. On one hand, the typical phenomenon is the existences of plenty of loan words in both English and Chinese languages. In the meanwhile, the nature and functions of advertising decide that aesthetic conception and demands should be included in the advertising to translation. On the other hand, cultural communication through advertising translation has an obvious effect on the ideologies of target audience. It helps those people to establish new values and changes their consumption conception, consumption pattern and lifestyles. ”Culture and communication is an interdependent unit in which culture finds its vitality only in the process of communication, in turn, communication is pointless and sterile without culture constitutes the fundamental nature of communication.” (庄晓东, 2003:12) Advertising is the main factor which decides whether a marketing communication is successful or not. Because advertising is an essential means of product promotion and service promotion in order to reform people around the world of the detailed information and advantages of their products. Advertising is also an indispensable medium of communication and cultural communication in particular, which deals with the cultural diversity properly in terms of the global market. So the marketers who are meant to penetrate into the international market should be aware of the significance of the cultural factor, an element playing a role of affecting product propaganda in the international market. In history, there are plenty of definitions of culture made by scholars from various subjects, such as humanities, philosophy, anthropology, sociology and so on. I will list several representative hereby. E.B. Taylor#8217;s definition of culture is: ”A complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habit acquired by individuals as members of a society.” (Mueller, 1998:87) His definition talked about the context of culture and where people can acquire culture. Another version of the definition of culture#8212;#8212;culture is ”a shared meaning system, found among those who speak a particular language dialect, during a specific historic period, and in a definable geographic region.”(Samovar Porter, 2003:19), which is a definition given by Harry Triandis. This version of definition is tend to explain the word ”culture” as a specific language in a specific region in a period of history. The third version defined culture as, broadly, ”a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors and material objects that the members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning.” This definition was made by Bates Fratkin (Bates Fratkin, 1999:5). There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people#8217;s eyes. In terms of the word ”culture”, different people of different fields in different period of history hold diverse beliefs. There is no right or wrong among those definitions. As far as I#8217;m concerned, the third definition combined the previous opinions on culture in order to give people relatively a more complete and sophisticated understanding. People living in a common culture share consistent values and ideology. Cultural differences or technically ”cultural distance”, argues Triandis (Samovar Porter, 2003:18), exists when people speak different languages and live in different social structures, diverse religions with various living standards and values. Today, however, when nations communicate with one another, and even a man communicate with another man who comes from another country, there exists cultural contact, clash, adaptation and assimilation. Therefore, people from different cultural background may develop various or even contrary habits and values. In the international market, marketers have to reform themselves to notice different cultural backgrounds of their target customers who are from diverse countries in order to avoid misunderstandings and even conflicts resulting in unnecessary financial and reputation losses,which are caused by cultural differences. While culture plays an important role in advertising, it is obviously significant to make advertising translation to target customers. Translators must take care of their faith, religions, customs, social structures, cultural taboos and so on. Advertising translation should cater to target customers#8217; habits and behaviors. Consequently, culture is an indispensable element in advertising translation and communication for the marketers who want to march into the international market. Guo Qingguang believes that ”communication is in nature a social interaction, through which people are interrelated with one another, influencing or being influenced.”(郭庆光, 1999:5) So cross-cultural communication is a kind of interaction within different cultural background which requires knowledge and understandings of various cultures and one#8217;s own culture. There is no doubt that divergence existing in the cross-cultural communication while people should keep open-minded to consider those differences. Communication is closely linked with culture, just as Fern L. Johnson argues that ”all communication bears cultural origins, conveys cultural meanings, and is interpreted through cultural frameworks.”(Samovar Porter, 2003:181) Another scholar claims that ”It is in the process of communication that culture is generated and learned, in turn, communication enhances cultural integration, reproduction and evolution,”(庄晓东, 2003:6) which supports the close relations between culture and communication. The word ”advertising” is defined in Cihai as ”a form used to publicize the information of the goods, services, enterprises and the like, through media, normally referring to commercial advertising. In a board sense, those which communicate social personnel, entertainments, ideas fall into the category of advertising.”(王军元, 2005:1-2) Another version of the definition of the word ”advertising” #8212;#8212;”Advertising is the non-personal communication of information, usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature, about products (goods and services) or ideas by identified sponsors through various media.”(刘志明, 倪宁, 1991:21) In a word, the aim of advertising is to promote products among target consumers and the promotion activities are carried out through various media, such as TV, radio, newspaper, Internet and so on. As is known to all, persuasion is the essence of advertising communication. So the final goal of advertising is to convince the target consumers to buy commodities or services or give a good impression on the promoting products. There is an explanation about the nature of advertising: ”It#8217;s fundamental goal is promotion; transmitting relevant messages of goods by means of mass media; the embodiment of comprehensive art.”(蔡嘉清, 2004:2-3) Therefore, when making advertising translation, translators need to exert themselves to noticing the cultural differences and changes among various cultures. In transmitting advertising information, the language usually carries the cultural background such as religions, customs, social structures, law, values of a country. These differences may lead to negative effects on products promotion. If the advertising translation is not coped with properly, it will cause unnecessary misunderstandings and even economic and reputation losses. Translators should take the values, customs, regional faith and other cultural factors of the target customers into consideration. ”Translation is a cross-culture act of information communication and exchange and the nature of translation is communication.”(吕俊, 1997:40) Homi Bhabha shares the same opinion that ”translation is the performative nature of cultural communication.”(Bassnett Lefevere, 2001:137) A translator should exert himself to choose proper translation strategies during the process of advertising translation. In order to promote advertising communication, the translator must adapt to the target language culture through different strategies. There are three typical strategies may be adopted: domestication, foreignization and creative translation. Schleiermacher believes that ”A translator is responsible for both cultures to which they belong and the texts they translate by either naturalizing what is foreign or keeping foreignness in a translation.”(Lefevere, 2004:5) Domestication and foreignization are two basic strategies of translation. Domestication has the similar meaning with assimilation to a large extent. However, domestication has been given additional deeper meaning: ”the dominant culture demands fluent translations adapted to its language and cultural norms and inscribed with its own values based on the inequality cultural status”. Domestication is the target language culture-oriented translation, which refers to a strategy in which the translator tries to retain the images and features of the source language and culture so as to keep the ”foreignness” of the source text. An advertisement is created under a specific source language cultural background on the basis of its own modes of thinking, customs and habits which are different from those of target language culture. Domesticating strategy is usually applied to the translation of brand name and slogan. Foreignization, as a kind of strategy of translation, means the characteristics of the source language and culture is kept in a great sense. In an advertising translation, this strategy of translation enables the target language customers to become aware that they are reading a translated text. Foreignization refers to the strategy in which the translator strives to substitute or interpret the images and features of the source language and culture with the corresponding ones familiar to the target customers in the target language culture. Foreignizing translation can at best make contributions to bridging the connections between the source language advertisements and the target language customers. Creative translation, a strategy of translation advanced by Li Kexing and discussed in his paper ”Strategies for Translation of Advertisements”. Professor Li said: ”As to those advertisements that possess bilingual texts in English and Chinese, the two texts share little in common in their literal meanings and the Chinese text is always regarded as based on the English one. Therefore the Chinese text is taken as a translation with large creativity rather than absolute production.”(李克兴, 2004:65-66) So creative translation refers to the rendition that is already out of the translation category with creativity. In the application of creative translation to advertising translation, the translator is given more liberty to create a rendition simply based on the source language advertising on condition that the rendition can produce effective marketing communication. Domestication, foreignization, and creative translation are three typical strategies of translation in the advertising translation, practically and theoretically. Culture is another important element required to be noticed, including social structures, religious faith, ideology, values, customs,law, morals and so on. Advertising translation must take cultural differences into account and make use of strategies of translation: domestication, foreignization, and creative translation in order to ensure that target customers are likely to receive the information of product promotion easier and more precise, which makes it more possible to sell products and earn a good commercial reputation.