Cultural Transfer in the Translation of Advertising

The purpose of this book is to study Venuti’s domestication and foreignization strategies in the translation of online advertising from English into Arabic. Based on Barthes model connotative denotative meanings in semiotics, the study specifically investigated the transfer of connotations in verbal and non-verbal elements in advertising from English into Arabic. By comparing 100 online English adverts and their rendered version into Arabic, using mixed methods of analysis, the results revealed that foreignization strategies highly affected the connotations of transferred textual elements, while domestication strategies highly affected the connotations of visual elements. The study, then, concluded that advertising in the Arab world highly maintains the foreign identity of the products advertised relying on their foreignness to attract the Arab consumers. However, only few instances of less known brand names were domesticated and adjusted to fit the cultural norms of the Arab consumers.