A Comparative Analysis of Commercial Advertisements on Websites: Translation and Localization Challenges from English into Arabic
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Date
2025-03-06
Authors
Sheeraz Jawdat Abdelhadi
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Publisher
جامعة النجاح الوطنية
Abstract
Abstract
This study examines a corpus of translated commercial advertisements on the websites of three iconic American companies— Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and McDonald’s—and their Arabic versions. Depending on a scientific reading of websites’ ads from a multimodal perspective, the researcher analyzes a collection of 20 English-Arabic ads published by the selected companies’ websites for the year 2024. Through the lens of Kress and Van Leeuwen's (2006) visual grammar paradigm, this study shows how various cultural nuances frame the received messages in different contexts. Specifically, it focuses on analyzing visual elements to identify the cultural challenges that translators may face when localizing American brands in Arab countries. Then the researcher adopts a descriptive and analytical approach, in which examples were collected by taking screenshots of the companies’ advertisements from their main pages or sub-pages, such as Facebook and Instagram. Then, the researcher categorizes and analyzes these examples according to Kress and Van Leeuwen’s framework, which is useful in decoding the potential meanings carried by images in multimodal texts.
Depending on the results, the researcher ensures the value of images as semiotic resources in conveying multi-layered meanings. Thus, Kress and Van Leeuwen’s methodology with its three metafunctions- representational, interactive, and compositional- helps the researcher conceptualize and categorize some critical concepts, namely: Sustainability, inclusivity, individualism, and collectivism. These concepts are framed within specific ideological contexts that are constructed on social norms, religious values, as well as politics, and environmentalism, which determine how audiences from different cultures understand, perspectivize, and conceptualize them. Consequently, the analysis highlights the contrast between American ads, which often frame their ads to emphasize the concepts of individualism and inclusivity to enhance capitalist hegemony by globalizing their products. Additionally, the researcher concludes that the representational function is more dominant in the American advertisements since they prioritize personal expressions. In contrast, the Arabic advertisements exhibited a stronger interactive function to emphasize family connections, community, and a sense of belonging, to foster their collective identity. Therefore, reframing these ads to fit the Arab audiences who focus on collectivistic social relations may cause challenges for translators from English to Arabic. For this reason, translators sometimes have to manipulate the source texts (STs) when localizing English websites’ ads to Arab audiences to produce readable and acceptable target content. Further, they sometimes decontextualize the source texts to recontextualize them to suit the target audience's hegemonic discourse.
The study’s summary findings contribute to extending the application of Kress and Van Leeuwen’s framework to the field of advertising localization, revealing how cultural differences affect the interpretation of visual elements. Additionally, the findings provide actionable insights for translators seeking to adapt English ads for the Arab countries, ensuring the significance of considering semiotic codes and cultural contexts. Methodologically, the study proves that Kress and Van Leeuwen’s model is effective in analyzing the complexities of localized ads. Ultimately, the study underscores the need for cultural awareness in advertising methods that help create successful communication strategies in the digitized and globalized era without affecting the target audience's norms and ideologies.
Finally, the study concludes with a set of recommendations that may help future researchers as well as future translators of websites’ commercial advertisements or multimodal text who intend to use Kress and Van Leeuwen’s framework in translating multimedia texts, whether commercial ads, public services, or any other media texts. The researcher hopes this will raise the level of translation in the Arab world to avoid any linguistic or visual manipulation that conflicts with their culture and ideology, particularly, the Arab-Islamic culture has its constraints and specifications.