Transference of brand personality in brand name translation: A case study on the Chinese-English translation of men’s clothing brands

Semiotica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (230) ◽  
pp. 475-493
Author(s):  
Ying Cui
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Brand Personality ◽  
Brand Names ◽  
Brand Name ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Chinese Consumers ◽  
Personality Dimensions ◽  
Self Perceptions ◽  
Chinese And English

Abstract Brand names are endowed with personalities that appeal to consumers, and such personalities are often adjusted in translation. This research aims to explore the transference of brand personality dimensions in the Chinese-English translation of men’s clothing brands, which embody consumers’ values and self-perceptions as well as social cultural meanings, in the hope of revealing male consumers’ psychological characteristics and providing a reference for translators. This investigation studies the brand personality frameworks for English and Chinese consumers, analyzes a corpus of 477 Chinese-English men’s clothing brands, summarizes the major personality dimensions for men’s clothing brands, and explores how they are transferred in translation. As brand personalities reflect target consumers’ psychology to a certain extent, exploring the transference of brand personality dimensions in the Chinese-English translation of men’s clothing brands can reveal the differences between Chinese and English male consumers’ values and mentality, which can serve as a reference for translators and international businesses.

Consonants in brand names influence brand gender perceptions

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 101-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelie Guevremont ◽  
Bianca Grohmann
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Brand Personality ◽  
Brand Names ◽  
Sound Symbolism ◽  
Brand Name ◽  
Personality Dimensions ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Marketing Literature ◽  
Gender Perceptions ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose – This paper examines to what extent consonants in brand names influence consumers’ perceptions of feminine and masculine brand personality. Design/methodology/approach – Four experiments empirically test the influence of consonants on feminine and masculine brand personality. The experiments involve different sets of new brand names, variations regarding the consonants tested (the stops k and t, the fricatives f and s), as well as different locations of the focal consonant in the brand name. Findings – Consonants influence consumers’ brand perceptions: brand masculinity is enhanced by stops (rather than fricatives), and brand femininity is enhanced by fricatives (rather than stops). Consonants specifically affect feminine and masculine brand personality, but not other brand personality dimensions. Consumers’ responses to brand names and resulting brand gender perceptions (i.e. likelihood to recommend) were moderated by salience of masculinity or femininity as a desirable brand attribute. Practical implications – This research has implications for brand name selection: consonants are effective in creating a specifically masculine or a feminine brand personality. Originality/value – This research is the first to specifically link consonants and feminine/masculine brand personality. By specifically examining consonants, this research extends the marketing literature on sound symbolism that is characterized by a focus on vowels effects. This research is also the first to address whether the position of the focal phoneme in the brand name matters.

Communication across languages and cultures

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Sang ◽  
Grace Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Target Group ◽  
Brand Names ◽  
Communication Strategy ◽  
Successful Outcome ◽  
Brand Name ◽  
Chinese Consumers ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Cross Cultural Communication ◽  
Linguistic Transfer ◽  
Oriented Approach

Communication across languages and cultures is a markedly complex issue, and translation is more than just a careful linguistic transfer: it is a purposeful action designed to achieve the most effective result in a target group. Few studies have discussed the role of communicative intent in translation, and this paper is a small step towards filling the gap. The conceptual framework adopted in this study is Skopostheorie (Vermeer, 1989), a functionalist approach with an emphasis on communicative Skopos (purpose or aim), target texts and audiences. Using a method of contrastive comparison among effective, ineffective and controversial brand name translations from English to Mandarin Chinese, a systematic analysis is conducted regarding four translation strategies: phonetic appeal, suitable meaning, socio-cultural adaptation and consumer acceptance. The findings demonstrate that any effective communication strategy needs to be in accordance with the communicative purpose of achieving an optimal impact upon the target group, and a successfully translated brand name should function in a target culture as effectively as the original name in a source culture. They suggest that a function oriented approach, rather than a source-text oriented approach, holds the key for a successful outcome. The most important thing is that translated brand names suit the needs of Chinese consumers. This study is significant in that it challenges the traditional sound/meaning-based approach, and provides enriched understanding of the importance of achieving communicative purposes and optimal functional impact in a target group. The insights gained from this study add a vital conceptual dimension to the study of translation, and cross-cultural communication in general. In addition, the findings of this study may also provide practical assistance for an effective outcome in translation, and have pedagogical value in the teaching of translation. While the discussion in this study is based on Chinese data, the findings have implications for the translation of other languages.

scholarly journals The presentation of brand personality in English-Chinese brand name translation

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying Cui
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Brand Personality ◽  
Brand Names ◽  
Brand Name ◽  
Emotional Involvement ◽  
Consumer Markets ◽  
The World ◽  
Positive Images

The brand name is an important asset of a business, for consumers rely on brand names to identify goods for purchase. English-Chinese brand name translation is of significance as it influences how a brand is received in China, which has become one of the largest consumer markets in the world. Brand names often cause consumers’ emotional response to enhance their memory, establish positive images about the brands, and serve the purpose of promotion. This paper discusses the issue of emotional involvement in English-Chinese brand name translation via discourse analysis and exploration of the presentation of brand personality in translation. The causes for and types of emotional involvement are investigated with reference to studies on brand personality which can invoke consumers’ emotional response and play a key role in enhancing consumers’ loyalty to and trust of a brand, and a revised framework of brand personality for Chinese brand name translations is provided on the basis of current research on English and Chinese brand personality, as well as analysis and classification of the brands in our corpus. The examples in our corpus are analyzed according to this framework, and the features of emotional involvement in the Chinese translations are summarized and discussed.

scholarly journals Brand Name Types and Consumer Demand: Evidence from China’s Automobile Market

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fang Wu ◽  
Qi Sun ◽  
Rajdeep Grewal ◽  
Shanjun Li
Keyword(s):  
Multinational Firms ◽  
Consumer Demand ◽  
Choice Model ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Brand Names ◽  
Foreign Firms ◽  
Brand Name ◽  
Chinese Consumers ◽  
Chinese Firms ◽  
Automobile Sales

Brand naming challenges are more complex in logographic languages (e.g., Chinese), compared with phonographic languages (e.g., English) because the former languages feature looser correspondence between sound and meaning. With these two dimensions of sound and meaning, the authors propose a four-way categorization of brand name types for logographic languages: alphanumeric, phonetic, phonosemantic, or semantic. Using automobile sales data from China and a discrete choice model for differentiated products, the authors relate brand name types to demand, with evidence showing that Chinese consumers preferred vehicle models with semantic brand names (7.64% more sales than alphanumeric) but exhibited the least preference for phonosemantic names (4.92% lower sales than alphanumeric). Domestic Chinese firms benefited from semantic brand names, whereas foreign firms gained from using foreign-sounding brand names. Entry-level products performed better with semantic brand names, and high-end products excelled when they had foreign-sounding brand names. Thus, the four-way categorization of brand name types should help multinational firms and domestic Chinese firms understand and leverage the association between brand name types and consumer demand.

EXPRESS: Is Nestlé a Lady? The Feminine Brand Name Advantage

2021 ◽  
pp. 002224292199306
Author(s):  
Ruth Pogacar ◽  
Justin Angle ◽  
Tina M. Lowrey ◽  
L. J. Shrum ◽  
Frank R. Kardes
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Conditions ◽  
Brand Names ◽  
Brand Name ◽  
Brand Performance ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Typical User

A brand name’s linguistic characteristics convey brand qualities independent of the name’s denotative meaning. For instance, name length, sounds, and stress can signal masculine or feminine associations. This research examines the effects of such gender associations on three important brand outcomes: attitudes, choice, and performance. Across six studies using both observational analyses of real brands and experimental manipulations of invented brands the authors show that linguistically feminine names increase perceived warmth, which improves brand outcomes. Feminine brand names enhance attitudes and choice share–both hypothetically and consequentially–and are associated with better brand performance. The authors establish boundary conditions, showing that the feminine brand name advantage is attenuated when the typical user is male and when products are utilitarian.

Cultural Meaning for Women Composers: Charlotte (“Minna”) Brandes and the Beautiful Dead in the German Enlightenment

2004 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Head
Keyword(s):  
Women Composers ◽  
Fund Raising ◽  
Close Friend ◽  
Cultural Meaning ◽  
Financial Loss ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
German Enlightenment

This article explores the cultural meanings of female musical authorship in the late German Enlightenment through a case study of Charlotte (“Minna”) Brandes, a composer, keyboardist, and opera singer. With Minna's death in 1788 at the age of twenty-three, her father, the playwright Johann Christian Brandes, and her close friend and teacher Johann Friedrich Höönicke prepared two memorials to her memory, a biography and a collection of her music, the latter titled Musikalische Nachlass von Minna Brandes (Hamburg, 1788). These memorials situated her authorship in the contexts of pedagogy and education, the composition of occasional works for the home, and the solace offered by music amidst bereavement and illness. The principal discourse was of death itself. Minna's memorialization shared with the novels of Goethe a topos of the beautiful female dead in which the female corpse (or its representation) was exhibited as a beautiful artifact. Death turned Minna from composer into a passive, aestheticized object of male authorship. These discursive contexts contained Minna's activities as a composer within a framework of bourgeois femininity. Both Minna's father and her teacher were at pains to stress that she sought neither fame nor fortune from her compositions. However, such representations of Minna were misleading. Her collected works suggest she was working toward a published collection of strophic German songs and toward the composition of operatic music for her own performance. The idealizing tropes of the memorials are also challenged by Johann Christian's later memoirs in which his daughter's turn to composition is situated in what he described as her multiple breaches of deferential daughterly conduct. Minna's reported profligacy during her final illness may have stimulated the posthumous publication of her music, which was possibly a form of fund raising for her multiply bereaved father, a corrective to his emotional and financial loss. The healthy list of 518 subscribers indicates that youthful female death was marketable as a topos occasioning the pleasures of melancholy.

Refraction and recognition

Target ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainier Grutman
Keyword(s):  
Relative Position ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
The World ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Minority Writers ◽  
Multilingual Literature

Texts foregrounding different languages pose unusual challenges for translators and translation scholars alike. This article seeks to provide some insights into what happens to multilingual literature in translation. First, Antoine Berman’s writings on translation are used to reframe questions of semantic loss in terms of the ideological underpinnings of translation as a cultural practice. This leads to a wider consideration of contextual aspects involved in the “refraction” of foreign languages, such as the translating literature’s relative position in the “World Republic of Letters” (Casanova). Drawing on a Canadian case-study (Marie-Claire Blais in English translation), it is suggested that asymmetrical relations between dominating and dominated literatures need not be negative per se, but can lead to the recognition of minority writers.

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