Cultural Transfer in the Translation of Brand Names in Advertising: The Case of Cosmetics

The amount of research on the translation of advertising has increased since 1995. However, very few studies have investigated translation strategies for translating brand names from English into Arabic. These studies seem to favour the foreignness of the product being advertised in the target adverts and, thus, neglect the role that should be played by the translator towards the target culture and target consumer. The aims of the present research are to investigate the strategies adopted to translate brand names from English into Arabic and to find out the impact of these strategies on the message of the target products. The results indicate that transplantation and transliteration as foreignizing strategies are highly employed in translating brands from English into Arabic, maintaining the foreign identity of the product being advertised and neglecting the target cultural norms. However, only few instances of less known brand names are transmuted and domesticated.