TRANSLATION OF IT MARKETING TEXTS: LINGUISTIC AND PRAGMATIC FACTORS

Abstract

The paper focuses on translating specialised marketing texts of software vendors and draws upon lexical units thereof and translation tactics employed in the process. The research material is English marketing texts of SAP and their German and Russian translations. Our hypothesis is that the choice of translation tactics may be conditioned by intertwined linguistic and pragmatic factors. To achieve the goal – to identify factors influencing the translator’s tactic choice of rendering English lexical units of marketing texts into German and Russian – the following methods have been utilized: the continuous sampling, comparative, descriptive ones, and the lexico- semantic analysis. The findings demonstrate that the choice of translation tactics in this respect can be conditioned by the following linguistic and pragmatic factors: 1) translatological information types, with all the four types being present in the material of study (cognitive, operative, emotive, and aesthetic); 2) target languages and cultures (German or Russian); 3) the lexico-semantic structure of the lexical units under study. With regard to cognitive information, the use of the precise information transfer tactic is relevant while correct information presentation can be avoided as some terms and abbreviations are left untranslated, with the latter tactic being prevailing in the German texts. As for emotive, aesthetic, and operative information, stylistic adaptation can be evident in the Russian target texts as opposed to the German ones.

Keywords

• translatological information type
• cognitive information
• operative information
• emotive information
• aesthetic information
• marketing text
• target audience
• translation tactic