Advertising Texts – A Globalised Genre: A Case Study of Translation Norms

Abstract

Globalisation has brought with it certain consumption models shared by different consumer groups in a variety of countries, as predicted by T. Levitt (1983) in his theory of the homogeneity of the markets. Advertising presents in a semiotic fashion (combining the verbal and visual mode), the sociological and cultural values of a society in a certain period of time. It also contributes effectively to the emergence of a global consumer culture, where “the majority of consumers avidly desire, and therefore try to acquire and display, goods and services that are valued for non-utilitarian reasons such as status seeking, envy provocation and novelty seeking” (Usunier 2000: 145). By means of advertising campaigns with an international projection based on global brands, as for example CocaCola, McDonald or Disney, the three major world brands (Kochan 1996: xvi), universal values are capable of transmitting certain life styles in a culture dominated by an American macro-culture and the English language as the lingua franca of international communication.