The Journal of Specialised Translation Issue 23 – January 2015

Multimodality and contextualisation in advertisement translation:

a case study of billboards in Hong Kong
Li Pan, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies

ABSTRACT

Though more and more non-verbal modes are deployed in advertising nowadays, related
literature shows that non-verbal modes involved in advertisements are largely neglected
in most research. The present paper demonstrates the role of non-verbal elements in
advertisements and the need for the translator to contextualise the linguistic messages in
advertisement translation. Through a detailed case analysis of billboards collected from
Hong Kong, it explores the ways in which translated linguistic messages are
contextualised by extra-linguistic components and indicates that the translation methods
used in the mediation between different cultures are largely determined by the
multimodal nature of billboard advertising. The theoretical insight into the notion of
context in Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986) has been applied to describe and
explain how the linguistic and extra-linguistic modalities of the billboards can interact
respectively within the cognitive environments of the original and the target audiences.
Based on results from the case study, this article concludes that translators are not only
influenced by multimodal aspects of the texts they translate, but that their translation
methods tend to be pre-decided by the extra-linguistic elements of the advertisement to
be translated as those elements are not to be altered in translation.

KEYWORDS

Advertisement translation; multimodality; contextualisation; billboard advertising in Hong

Kong; Relevance Theory; cognitive environment.

1. Introduction

Advertising, as the engine of commerce, plays a critical role in the success

of a company in this increasingly commercialised society. In the age of
global economy, effective translations can be crucial when businesses are
targeting a foreign market. However, producing effective translations of
advertisements has long been a hard nut to crack for translators.
Academically, this area of Translation Studies has also been challenging
for researchers (Munday 2004).

The situation has worsened since multimodality has become a dominant

feature of modern advertising. Translators are still mostly trained to focus
on semantic aspects of the texts that they work on. It is therefore easy for
them to neglect other elements of communication essential to advertising.
The semantic elements in the language of advertisements, a core aspect
that translators deal with, should of course be considered with great
attention. However, in most cases, an advertisement has more than just
linguistic elements, and, in fact, “is an interaction of elements” (Cook
1992: 5). There is a tendency to adopt non-verbal modes more than the
verbal one and some outdoor advertisements depend primarily on visual

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elements rather than on linguistic ones. Billboard advertising is a case in

point. For instance, it is common to see billboards with large illustrations
and just simple headlines or slogans in almost every city around the
world. Even so, translation scholars have so far given priority to linguistic
elements of advertising texts and neglected the interaction of the verbal
and non-verbal modes in advertising translation (Macario and Boyte 2008,
Smith 2006).

Inspired by the notion of context in Relevance Theory (hereafter RT,

Sperber and Wilson 1986), the present study is to examine this interaction
of the non-verbal and verbal elements and the translation methods used
in four bilingual billboards collected from Hong Kong, aiming to explore
the impact of the non-verbal modes on translating the verbal component
in advertisements. Multimodality in advertising will also be discussed in
relation to general advertising principles and linguistic requirements for a
successful advertisement translation.

2. Related Concepts and Notions

2.1 Multimodality in advertising and headlines of billboards

In the current audiovisual age, advertising has developed into a kind of

multimedia-assisted communication. It is increasingly dependent on
multiple modes for effective promotion, thus using multimodality as one of
its prominent features. Multimodality, a term borrowed from Kress’s
notion of modes (1997, 2001), refers to the combination of different kinds
of modes, visual, audio, written, oral, spatial, etc. in human
communication (Kress and Leeuven 1996, Kress 2003). Multimodality in
advertising suggests the use of different communicative modes in a single
advertisement. For instance, a print advertisement uses a combination of
words, illustration, font and color to send a message, and this mixing and
melding of modalities represents multimodality. In communicating the
messages and intentions of the advertisers, these varied yet integrated
modes act interactively.

The significance of visual modes in advertising has long been studied with
great interest by scholars of advertising (e.g. Hopkins 1923, Rotzoll 1985)
as well as from various other perspectives, including psychology (e.g.
Kosslyn and Alper 1977, Rossiter 1980), consumer research (Mitchell and
Olson 1977, Rossiter and Percy 1978), and marketing management (e.g.
Zubcevic and Luxton 2011). For instance, Claude Hopkins, a pioneer
advertising consultant, stressed in his famous Scientific Advertising (1923:
12), “Don’t think that those millions will read your advertisements to find
out if your product interests. They will decide by a glance – by your
headline or your pictures.” Hopkins’ statement is particularly true in
billboard advertising which usually shows large pictures and short
headlines. Billboards are highly visible in top designated market areas
because of their powerful presence. The headline in outdoor advertising

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such as billboards, in contrast to its function in a newspaper or magazine

advertisement which demonstrates the main content of the following body
text, is like a caption in the way that it more often than not accompanies
an illustration rather than other verbal text. Viewed from the cognitive
perspective (Wilson and Sperber 1988a, 1988b, 1993, Wilson 1994), the
headline, or slogan as it is most commonly called, is the linguistic element
and acts as the most explicit mode of communication. It is generally
indispensable in driving people into the action of purchase, no matter how
many modes are deployed in an advertisement. Headlines are thus vital
for the success of advertisements.

Even so, both advertising-focused and cognition-oriented studies have

revealed that the various non-verbal elements in different advertising
media are also crucial for the interpretation of the verbal message (e.g.
Block 1981, Bamard 1995), mainly because multimodal advertisements
have been designed to facilitate an interaction between the different kinds
of modes involved in communication for the best possible advertising
effect (Barthes 1977, Sparkman and Austin 1980). The headline and the
accompanying illustration interact with each other and make the message
conveyed in the billboard more explicit. However, in Translation Studies,
only a few scholars have given attention to this neglect in the study of the
role of non-verbal modes in advertisement translation (Nomura 2000,
Valdés 2000).

2.2 AIDA and KISA

Scholars studying advertising have noted that to achieve the ultimate

purpose of selling the product, advertisers are encouraged to follow AIDA,
an acronym that indicates an established advertising principle modelling
consumer reaction to a successful advertisement. The principle was
formulated and developed by E. St. Lewis (1899), an American advocate
of advertising. Although it has been criticised by some as outdated (see
for instance Barry 1987), it is historically considered to be the best
established model of advertising. In addition, billboard advertising, which
is the object of our case study seems particularly well suited to it. The
four letters of AIDA stand for the necessary stages that an advertisement
needs to go through to work on a potential customer, i.e. (1) Attention;
(2) Interest; (3) Desire; (4) Action. In other words, an appealing
advertisement should be able to grab the attention of the potential
customer, get him interested, fill him with desire, and push him into
action. In AIDA, different psychological components form the foundation
of the ultimate goal of action and cognition plays a vital role in the
realisation of the principle. The consumers’ cognition actually serves both
as the starting point and the final stage of the psychological procedure in
AIDA as attention, interest and desire all function at the cognitive level
(Percy and Rossiter 1980). That is to say, only when the information
reaches the cognitive layer of the addressee’s psychology can the other
reactions be triggered.

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As it is assumed that an audience will take little notice of the advertiser’s

message, advertising language is expected to be short and appealing,
hence “Keep It Short and Appealing” (Ding 1995), which is summarised as
KISA, a linguistic principle outlining the two basic requirements of the
language used in an advertisement. While being short refers to the length
of the words used, being appealing suggests that the language used needs
to be pleasing and persuasive enough to trigger a positive response, for
instance the desire and even the action of purchase. The KISA principle is
particularly significant in achieving AIDA in translating billboard
advertisements. Due to the mobility of its audience, billboard advertising
allows only a headline usually of “no more than seven words” (Lane and
Russell 2004: 179). It is therefore even more crucial for the headline of an
outdoor advertisement (in comparison with other advertising media) to
follow the linguistic principle KISA as well as to achieve AIDA. In other
words, only when the linguistic part is short and brief enough can the
advertisement be understood quickly and potentially stimulate interest
desire; only when the language is interesting enough and easy to follow
can the receiver appreciate the message and thus generate desire and
action of purchase.

2.3 Notion of Context in RT and Contextualisation

Context is crucial to advertising translation (Pan 2003), much in the same

way as it is central to Translation Studies in general (Gutt 1997, Pan 2002,
2004) and it is to any discipline concerned with language use (House
2006). The main ideas about context have been developed in different
research traditions, including psychology (Grice 1975, Sperber and Wilson
1986), sociolinguistics (Bateson 1972, Goffman 1974), pragmatics (Ochs
1975, Levinson 1983) and philosophy (Wittgenstein 1958). Among these,
the notion of context that is particularly influential for the ideas in other
traditions is the one developed by Sperber and Wilson as part of their
Relevance Theory (hereafter RT). Based on Grice’s (1975) theory of
implicature in language use, RT is a linguistic theory providing a cognitive
approach to the study of communication.

Particularly beneficial to advertising translation in practice and research is

RT’s notion of characterising communication as achieved by means of the
consequent mutuality of the cognitive environment and the operation of
inferential processes. Context in RT is thus conceptualised as a “cognitive
environment”, a psychological concept defined as “the set of premises
used in interpreting” an utterance; it is a cognitive construct acting as a
‘‘subset of the hearer’s assumptions about the world’’ (Sperber and Wilson
1986: 15). It relies on the mental availability of environmental factors
internalised in one’s cognitive structure for interpretation. According to
Sperber and Wilson, cognitive environment consists of a huge variety of
potential information. It includes “information that can be perceived in the
physical environment, information that can be retrieved from memory”

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and “furthermore information that can be inferred from the two sources”
(Gutt 1991:25).

In terms of multimodal billboards, visual modes can act as the context for
the interpretation of non-verbal messages, in the sense that such modes
easily grab the audience’s attention and quickly enter into their
perception. On the one hand, the illustrations and pictures, designed to be
eye-catching, have a powerful presence on billboards and can be
internalised quicker than the verbal message. On the other hand, the
headlines make the implicit non-verbal elements explicit, as verbal
communication is believed to be most ostensive in the sense that “it
introduces an element of explicitness where non-verbal communication
can never be more than implicit” (Sperber and Wilson 1986:175). The
cognitive operation of the inferential process of the linguistic stimuli relies
on the context available to the audience. Therefore, in multimodal
advertisements, as soon as the non-verbal yet attention-grabbing
elements have been internalised as mentally available environmental
factors to the audience, they help to form the “cognitive context” (Sperber
and Wilson 1986:15) for processing the accompanying linguistic elements.
Accordingly, in translating the headline on a billboard, the translator needs
to consider the cognitive environment of the target audience, which
usually consists of:

1) What is perceived in the physical environment, for instance, the

pictorial elements, other verbal elements, and the frame of the
billboard and its surroundings.
2) Relevant information retrieved from memory, including available socio-
cultural as well as linguistic knowledge.
3) Further information inferred from the two sources, i.e. the impression
formed from the interaction of all the elements comprising the
advertisement, and other perceptions and available memories.

However, it should be noted that context in RT is not conceptualised as a

condition prescribed before inference but the recognition produced in the
very dynamic process of inference. In the process of interpreting a
headline, the audience constructs the immediately given context based on
their perception of the physical environment, in which the various
elements interact and generate assumptions in their mind. Their cognitive
environment is thus constantly changed, expanded and enriched,
becoming the basis for further interpretation of newly perceived stimuli. In
this sense, among other kinds of information that constitute the cognitive
environment, the inference of the headline a billboard relies vitally on the
pictorial elements in the advertisement, which therefore form the
assumption most likely to be part of the cognitive context of the linguistic
stimulus. The important message for the translator is that
contextualisation is a necessity in handling the linguistic components in
translation for advertising.

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The term contextualisation was first used in sociolinguistics to refer to the

use of language and discourse to signal relevant aspects of a
communicative situation (Eerdmans, Prevignano and Thibault 2003;
Gumperz 1982). Prior to the use of the word contextualisation, many
cross-cultural linguists, anthropologists and missionaries had been
involved in similar communication approaches, adapting a message or
meaning to another cultural setting (Bernstein 1990). However, since the
early 1970s, the meaning of the word contextualisation has widened. It is
now used by religious and political groups to render their message into
different settings by adjusting or accommodating words, phrases or
meanings into understandable contexts in respondent cultures (Gumperz
1982). In this study, contextualisation is defined as placing a word or
activity in a context in communication.

In line with the notion of context in RT, contextualisation in translation for

advertising can be carried out on at least two occasions: 1) translating the
slogan of an advertisement into different versions in a target language
when the pictures or figures might produce different assumptions due to
the difference in the cognitive environment of the target reader; 2)
rendering the headline of an advertisement into a version which not only
matches the illustrative components in the advertisement but also draws
on the pictorial elements for its interpretation. The present paper will only
discuss the second case, in which the translated billboard headlines will be
analysed in the context of the non-verbal elements, so as to see how
contextualisation of a headline within the multimodality of the billboard
can better achieve the desired advertising effect.

3. Contextualisation of headlines in advertisement translation

Analysed below are four billboard advertisements collected from the Hong
Kong-Macao Ferry Terminal in Hong Kong. The aim is to explore the
possible use of the notion of context in RT as an analytical tool to examine
the contextual effect of the non-verbal elements on the verbal elements in
the original and the translated advertisements. Among the four sample
billboards, the first two are in bulletins advertising two new casino hotels,
and the other two samples are from the posters promoting the ferry
services available at the terminal (ST stands for the source text, TT for the
target text, LT for literal translation).

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Example 1

Illustration 1: A billboard promoting Crown Macao Hotel.

ST: 澳門皇冠，盛事盛放
LT: Crown Macao, great things happen greatly.
TT: Where Great Things Happen.

In Example 1, the billboard promotes the Crown Macao Hotel, a modern

and luxurious hotel with a casino, targeting the high-end gaming market.
While the Chinese headline 澳門皇冠 ,盛事盛放 (Crown Macao, great things
happen greatly) is self-sufficient as it includes both the name of the casino
hotel Crown Macao and the theme of the advertisement “great things
happen greatly,” the English version “Where Great Things Happen” is
incomplete in structure and vague in meaning due to the absence of the
antecedent noun. No one can tell from the clause what place the adverbial
‘where’ refers to. Linguistically, the ostensive stimulus is not relevant
enough to be interpreted if it stands alone.

However, the headline does not stand alone but is accompanied by images
of a superstar and the splendid skyscraper of the casino hotel (Illustration
1). Since pictures grab viewers’ attention more easily (Cook 1992), the
picture is bound to attract passers-by before the headline does. More
importantly, the superstar presented in the picture is Chow Yun-Fat, a
handsome and eye-catching international film star recognised as "the
coolest actor in the world” by some American media commentators (Smith
1995). Chow has been adored internationally, particularly for his
successful role in God of Gamblers and several other world famous films
featuring gambling. For passers-by who have seen those films and been
impressed by his image as a “Gambling King” or “Gambling God” in the
stories, their perception of the pictorial elements in the billboard and
memory of Chow being the God of Gamblers could constitute part of the
cognitive environment needed for their inference of the English headline.
At the same time, with the antecedent noun missing, the linguistic
stimulus in the headline could function to direct the passers-by to find out
what the adverbial ‘where’ refers to. It is easy for them to find the answer

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in the sparkling image of the 36-storey tower of the Crown Macao behind
Chou. The pictorial elements in the advertisement thus not only form the
assumption that is most likely to be part of the cognitive context of the
linguistic stimulus but also help to provide the information omitted
verbally.

Example 2

Illustration 2: A billboard promoting MGM Grand Macao.

ST: 来·玩在今晚夜！
LT: Come· Play tonight!
TT: SEIZE THE NIGHT. COME

Example 2 presents a billboard promoting MGM Grand Macao, a casino

resort in Macao, owned and operated through a partnership between MGM
Mirage and Pansy Ho Chiu-king, the daughter of Stanley Ho, the Macao
casino tycoon. Among the verbal and non-verbal elements on the
billboard, the photo of the large bronze statue of a lion is so conspicuous
that it is bound to grab people’s attention instantly. For people who are
interested in casinos, the Lion named “Leo the Lion” is a familiar image as
it is the mascot of MGM, a world famous casino corporation. For those who
are unfamiliar with MGM, the simple yet glorious bronze statue of Leo the
Lion is such a powerful presence that it can impress the passers-by and
drive them to find more information about it, either in the billboard or
from the video played on the screen in front of the billboard (Illustration
2). The pictorial and visual information presented in the physical
environment interact with each other and construct part of the cognitive
environment needed for further interpretation of information perceived in
other modes, including the Chinese and the English headlines in the upper
left corner and the logo of MGM in the upper right.

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In addition, the Chinese and the English headlines, targeting their own
respective readers, provide linguistic stimuli that enable the readers to
retrieve different memories. Specifically, the expressions 今晚夜 (tonight)
in the Chinese headline and “THE NIGHT” in English tend to stimulate
different associations in the readers’ minds. On the one hand, the Chinese
headline is actually in Cantonese, a dialect of Chinese not only used in
Hong Kong, Macao, and some areas in the southern part of the Chinese
Mainland but also well-received in other parts of China probably due to the
booming economy in the areas where it is spoken as well as the popularity
of Cantonese songs around the whole country. To people who know
Cantonese or sing Cantonese songs, the linguistic structure of 玩在今晚夜
(play tonight) in the headline alludes to the lyrics of popular Cantonese
songs. Two Cantonese songs are even titled 今晚夜 (Tonight). One is the
theme song of a popular Hong Kong TV series. The other is the song used
in a well-known show named Enjoy Yourself Tonight or E.Y.T. which is
shown by Hong Kong TVB. The show was quite entertaining and welcomed
in the Cantonese areas in China, and in fact enjoyed such popularity in
Hong Kong that it lasted 27 years and was one of the world's longest
running live-shows. Its theme song 今 晚 夜 was popular in Cantonese-
speaking areas and is still frequently broadcast on the radio there. A nice
memory could be triggered by the linguistic stimulus in the Chinese
headline and the association could produce a certain degree of contextual
effect.

On the other hand, the phrase “seize the night” in the English translation
is likely to activate a range of different associations in the English readers’
cognitive environment. Those who are the fans of suspense thrillers will
probably recall Seize the Night, a novel written by the best-selling author
Dean Koontz, whose books have often appeared on the New York Times
Bestseller List. Some English readers might think of a popular English
song named Seize the Night or of a famous concert, since Seize the Night
was used as the name both of a well-known song and of a 2007 world
concert tour by Meat Loaf, a famous American rock singer and stage and
screen actor who has appeared in over 50 movies and television shows.
The lyrics of the song are also very operative, and have such lines as
“Come with me and seize the night, Now’s the time for some inspiration,
Leave the day and lose the light, No taboos only new sensations.”

No matter what information has been activated from their memory by the
operative phrase, the English reader might produce assumptions like ‘the
place advertised is full of mysteries and adventures as well as fun and
fashion.’ Such an assumption fits well with MGM Grand Macao’s own claim
on its official website about the casino resort: “a place where the
inhibitions are discarded and new desires found.” Even without association
with those pop songs and bestsellers, ‘the night’ itself is a word which can
stimulate fascination, even more so when associated with a renowned
casino resort. The English headline is thus powerful and persuasive to

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Western gaming tourists heading for Macao, most of whom are familiar
with MGM Mirage, which owns casinos and hotel resorts in different parts
of the world, including the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Additionally, the
MGM Lion Statue, the largest bronze statue in the Western Hemisphere,
located at the entrance of the MGM Grand Las Vegas, is a familiar image
to gaming tourists. In this way, when the perceivers look at the
advertisement, both the English and the Chinese headlines are
contextualised by the pictorial elements as well as other verbal elements.

The next two samples are posters promoting two brands of ferry service
between Hong Kong and Macao. The pictorial illustrations of the vessels
on both posters help tourists to interpret the messages in the
advertisements better, but to a varying degree due to the difference in the
cognitive environments of the ST and TT readers, as elaborated below.

Example 3

Illustration 3: A billboard promoting CotaiJet.

ST: “金光飛航”舒適、省時
澳門氹仔瞬在眼前
LT: Golden Sparkling Speeding Route is comfortable and time-saving; Taipa of
Macao will come into sight right now.
TT: Travel in style – direct to Taipa, Macao.

In Example 3, CotaiJet, a ferry service operated by Cotai Chu Kong

Shipping Management Services Co. Ltd is advertised. Compared with the
Chinese headline, the English is briefer with just seven short words. In
particular, the Chinese name of the brand 金 光 飛 航 (Golden Sparkling
Speeding Route) is omitted form the English version. However, with the
picture of a blue vessel below the headlines, it is not difficult for the
perceivers to infer that what is being advertised is a ferry service.
Moreover, the English Cotai Strip on the body of the vessel indicates the
specific destination of the ferry, i.e. Cotai Strip, a section of Macao joining
the two islands of Coloane and Taipa of Macao which resulted from the

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Macao government’s major land reclamation project. The term Cotai Strip
is an ostensive linguistic stimulus to foreign tourists who are interested in
gaming, since it is the name of the casino and tourism district of Cotai in
Macao. It is named after the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas (Cotai Strip
n.d.), and its name was coined by the Las Vegas Sands Corporation who
were responsible for building a strip of hotel-casinos in Cotai. Compared
with the Chinese original which includes both the brand 金光飛航 and the
destination Taipa, Macao, the English headline is briefer, conveying the
essential advantage of the route, “direct to Taipa, Macao”. The reason why
“Taipa, Macao” is indicated as the destination instead of Cotai, in both the
Chinese and the English headlines, is obviously because Taipa is more
familiar to both ordinary Chinese and foreign tourists, compared with
Cotai, a new section in Macao resulting from a recent land reclamation
project.

In addition, the physical context also contributes to the principle of KISA

in the sense that the location of the billboard as part of the physical
environment helps tourists in forming the right assumption about the
starting place of the ferry service. It is thus not necessary to put this
information into the limited space of the billboard. As for the description of
the journey in the phrase “travel in style”, the picture of the splendid
looking vessel can serve as evidence and give tourists confidence that
they will enjoy a comfortable journey.

Example 4

Illustration 4: A billboard promoting TurboJET

ST: 出發隨心所欲 購票網路全面開通

LT: Start off anytime at will. All networks of ticket purchase are available.
TT: Start Off Anytime. Get Your Tickets Online.

In Example 4, the poster promotes TurboJET, the ferry service run as part
of the operations of the Hong Kong-based Shun Tak-China Travel Ship
Management Limited. The English translation also strictly follows the
principle of KISA. To start with, it is short: only seven words. In addition,

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its message is appealing as regards convenience. It is good for any

tourists to know that they can “start off anytime” and get their tickets
online. Yet the English translation could hardly stand alone, for no
information about the ‘product’ or ‘service’ is provided, and the name of
the brand advertised is not given. However, the pictorial element
illustrates the service with a picture of the red vessel. On the body of the
vessel, the name of the brand TurboJET can be seen. Additionally, the
picture of a man booking online with his mobile reinforces the ostensive
reassurance of the convenience stated in the Chinese four-character
phrase 隨心所欲 (at will) and the English expression “Get Your Tickets
Online.” The obviously satisfied smile on the face of the man and the
promising words “Start off Anytime” in the English headline interact and
result in an appealing translated advertisement which fulfils the AIDA
principle.

4. Discussion

Based on the analysis of the sample headlines and their translations on

the billboards displayed at the Hong Kong-Macao Ferry Terminal, we will
discuss the findings in relation to the notion of RT as well as to the KISA
and the AIDA principles. Translation methods used in handling the
billboard headlines are also discussed, followed by a summary of
implications.

4.1 Findings

Firstly, our analysis shows that the translations and the original headlines
are not self-sufficient in meaning and pose problems for inferring the
intended information if they stand alone. Most significantly, none of the
sample translated headlines gives the name of the brand advertised. For
instance, in Example 1, though the name of the casino hotel appears in
the Chinese original, it is omitted in the English translation. The same is
true of Example 3, in which the brand name Cotai Strip in the ST is
omitted in the TT. The success of the translations depends largely on the
non-verbal elements which form part of the cognitive context in
processing the linguistic message. Secondly, it is found that non-verbal
elements also help the translated headlines to conform to the KISA
principle. Generally speaking, “keeping it short” is comparably more
challenging to achieve in copywriting the headlines on the billboards
displayed in Hong Kong, since because of the bilingual nature of this
international commercial centre, two versions are necessary. The
translation thus has to be as short as possible due to the limited space
available and the low span of attention of the moving pedestrian. We
have seen that all the samples contain very short and concise English
translated headlines. The realisation of KISA in all those headlines is found
to depend on the pictorial elements serving as the immediate context for
the headlines. For instance, among the samples, the longest Chinese

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headline is found in Example 3, and it has 16 characters but there are

only seven words in its translation. None of the translated headlines
exceeds seven words and the shortest has only four (See Example 2).
However, with the non-verbal and other verbal elements accompanying
them, those headlines do not pose any problem in understanding. It
shows that the translator has taken into consideration both the verbal and
non-verbal elements in translating the billboard headlines so as to achieve
the KISA principle while fulfilling the function of AIDA of the billboard
advertising.

4.2 Context-dependency of translation methods

In the sample headlines, we have seen that all the non-verbal elements in
the original advertisement remain unchanged and only the headline is
translated. With the images and other visual materials being static, the
linguistic signs have to be manipulated to match the non-verbal modes of
communication. The methods used in translating headlines on billboards
are thus highly context-dependent.

As illustrated in the case study, the translated headlines are in the same
physical environments as the originals. The difference in terms of
cognitive environments of the original and the target readers only lies in
the assumptions formed by information retrieved from memory, which
includes the social and cultural as well as linguistic knowledge. With the
same physical context but distinct information in the target reader’s
memory, the translated headline not only needs to fit into and to be able
to interact with the other elements in the advertisement and its
surroundings but also to be able to interact with the information which
might be retrieved from the target reader’s memory.

This explains the different methods used in translating the headlines. For
instance, the illustrations in Example 1 and 3 present the pictures of the
advertised brands in English and provide the English target reader the
needed physical environment for the inference of the translated English
headlines. That makes the omission of the brand names in the English
translations possible and helps to implement the KISA principle in the
translated headlines. In Example 4, specification is deployed in the
English translation of the headline, as compared with the Chinese original
購 票 網 路 全 面 開 通 (All networks of ticket purchase are available), the
English translation get your tickets online mentions just one of the specific
ways of getting tickets. In Example 2, though the linguistic structures of
the ST and TT are very similar, the method of “adaptation”, in the sense
used by Vinay and Darbelnet (2000: 91), is used. Adaptation, as one of
the seven translation procedures proposed by the two authors, refers to
the way of rendering used when the type of situation being referred to by
the original message is unknown in the target culture. As illustrated in the
analysis of Example 2, the literal translation of the Chinese 今 晚 夜 , a

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phrase of stimulating an association in lots of Hong Kong locals and other

Cantonese speakers, would hardly make any sense to the English
audience because of the difference in the information that can be
retrieved from memory. With the English expression seize the night used
in the translation, the ST is adapted, and the TT creates a new set of
associations in the target reader’s cognitive environment.

4.3 Implications

The findings from the case analysis raise several points regarding
translating billboard headlines. To start with, modes other than the
linguistic mode function unavoidably, and in fact beneficially, as context in
the cognitive processing of the linguistic elements. The interplay of verbal
and non-verbal elements in the advertisements should therefore not be
ignored in headline translating. Secondly, for outdoor advertising in
different forms, because short and appealing linguistic messages are more
appealing and thus easier to remember, the KISA principle is particularly
important as they ensure the use of the cognitive processes identified in
the AIDA model. To arrest the eye of the passers-by who are moving, the
billboards usually accompany their headlines with clear, large and
informative pictorial components. The pictorial elements make short and
appealing translated headlines possible and the advertisements striking.

At the same time, an awareness of multimodality in billboard advertising

helps the translator to adhere to the KISA and the AIDA classical
principles and ultimately fulfil the goal of selling products or services. In
addition, the translator should keep in mind that the intended contextual
effect of a translated headline comes from the cognitive process of all the
available assumptions which constitute the cognitive environment. Hence,
the possible cognitive environment of the target addressee should be
taken into consideration. However, above all, the choice of the translation
methods in most cases depends on a careful analysis of the various
elements provided by the multimodalities in the advertisement, because
the extra-linguistic elements, as stimuli sent out by the advertiser and as
implicit messages facilitating the linguistic communication, serve as the
most immediate physical context of the headlines.

5. Results and concluding remarks

Based on the notion of context in RT, this paper has examined features of
multimodality in billboard advertising in relation to translation. With a
focus on the pictorial elements in the billboard samples chosen, the
analysis shows that the non-verbal modes function as part of the cognitive
context used in inferring the verbal elements; the visual elements
contribute to the contextualisation of the translated headlines. The
multimodal nature of today’s advertising helps to produce translations of
headlines in line with the KISA and the AIDA principles. This study also
indicates that the choice of translation methods is pre-decided by the

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extra-lingual components of a billboard as those elements are not to be

changed in translation.

The study suggests that the multimodality of advertising and the

interaction between different modalities in advertisements have to be
taken into consideration by the translator in rendering billboard headlines
accompanied by pictorial elements and other verbal or non-verbal ones. At
the same time, to guarantee the intended contextual effect for the target
customer when reading a translated headline, the translator needs to
predict the cognitive context generated from the interplay of the non-
verbal elements and the related information available in memory as well as the
interaction of the cognitive environment of the target reader with the
possible translations of the headline. The paper therefore concludes that
multimodality is not only helpful in realising AIDA in advertising but also
effective in facilitating the realisation of the KISA principle in
advertisement translation. It is vital for the translator to make full use of
the contextual effect of the multimodal elements in translating the
linguistic elements in the multimodal advertisements.

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Biography

The author is a PhD holder of Translation Studies from the University of

Macao and a lecturer at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China.
Her recent publications include journal articles in Perspectives, The
Translator, and Journal of Universal Language, and two papers are
expected to be published in Target and the Chinese Translators' Journal in
2015. Her main research interests include advertisement translation,
discourse analysis, translation for the media.

Email: [email protected].

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