Across Languages and Cultures 15 (2), pp.

313–316 (2014)
DOI: 10.1556/Acr.15.2014.2.9

Book Review

Ira Torresi
Translating Promotional and Advertising Texts

Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing, 2010

193 pp. ISBN: 978 1 905763 20 7 (pbk)
ISSN 1470-966X (Translation Practices Explained)
St. Jerome’s Translation Practices Explained series has fulfilled a role in trans-
lator training that might be regarded as a mission, i.e. bridging the gap between
translation theory and practice. While most of the volumes are definitely in-
tended as coursebooks or resource books for translator training, with detailed il-
lustrations and exercises, and more recently with DVDs and textbook compan-
ion websites, they also show how the concepts worked out by translation theory
can be put to practical use. The authors tend to have strong links with both
Translation Studies (TS) research and the profession of translation. The author
of the volume reviewed here, Ira Torresi, is a translator trainer and researcher at
Bologna University, and has extensive practical and academic experience.
The series has covered topics such as conference and court interpreting, le-
gal, medical, technical and scientific translation, translating for the European
Union institutions, electronic tools and corpora, subtitling and dubbing, revising
and editing, etc. Some of the titles have gone into their second edition, indicat-
ing a sustained interest in the topic.
Coursebooks are rarely reviewed in academic journals like Across Lan-
guages and Cultures (the only exception so far has been the review by Marzoc-
chi, 2005). Thus, Torresi’s Translating Promotional and Advertising Texts,
Volume 12 of the series, is going to be the second exception. In view of its pub-
lication date, the role of this review is not to present it, but rather to evaluate it
on the basis of some practical experience, as a resource book in translator train-
ing.
While its use as a coursebook in certain contexts may be possible, I think
that most translator training programs would not have time for a full-fledged
course in translating promotional and advertising texts (PATs). The author an-
ticipates this possibility, and advises teachers to select topics according to need
and time available. She also recommends that the examples and exercises pro-
vided be replaced with fresh material. On the other hand I think that this volume
is excellent as a resource book, and it has great transfer value. It provides a
wealth of information about the translation of a specific text type (PATs), from
self-promotional materials like CVs and job applications through company

1585-1923/$ 20.00 © 2014 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest

314 BOOK REVIEW

websites to tourist brochures. In addition, it allows comparison of the issues oc-

curring in the translation of PATs with those occurring in the translation of
more specialized registers, such as business, legal, technical and scientific texts,
providing an excellent starting point for explorations into theoretical issues. In
this way, Torresi’s book offers opportunities to build bridges between theory
and practice – it may be used as a companion volume to a coursebook on trans-
lation theory. I found it an excellent book for demonstrating in practice some of
the theoretical principles of translation, in spite of the fact that it is not directly
concerned with theoretical issues.
The theoretical background of the book is functionalism (skopos theory)
and Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. The author steers clear of discussing theo-
retical issues at length; she explains what theory she considers useful in acces-
sible, jargon-free language. She emphasizes the need for translators to correctly
assess the communicative situation: who is communicating with whom through
translation, with what purpose, and in what communicative setting. Knowledge
of who is talking to whom includes knowledge of the cultural background of the
participants, and cultural differences lead to linguistic and stylistic differences
influencing the options available to the translator. Knowledge of the purpose of
communication is related to text function: the latter, in this case, is various mix-
tures of giving information and persuading, with the primacy of the latter. How-
ever, the exact nature of the mixture counts: the author introduces, for practical
purposes, the term “information-to-persuasion ratio” (which can easily be
backed up by references to Jakobson’s and other linguists’ language functions)
and shows how differences in this ratio impact on the translation of different
PATs. Since PATs have a persuasive purpose, their translations must be as-
sessed in terms of the effectiveness of rendering this purpose. Therefore, trans-
creation (an extreme form of covert, domesticating translation, also known as
adaptation) may be acceptable, if text function remains the same. For the same
reason, the strategy of compensation is also common.
PATs are classified according to the principle of who is talking to whom:
individual to organisation (self-promotion), business to business or customer,
institution to customer/consumer, etc. Analyses of the effects of text type, func-
tion, purpose and audience characteristics on translational solutions are pro-
vided, based on examples from the author’s own professional experience. It is
indeed fascinating to read how English and American CVs or healthcare institu-
tional promotional texts are different from Italian ones, how the differences are
related to underlying cultural differences and how the differences should or
could be dealt with in translation. Different cultures expect and/or tolerate dif-
ferent degrees of power distance and authoritativeness from institutions. The
acceptable balance between formality and creativity allowed in job application
letters also depends on cultural traditions. Incidentally, many of the cultural dif-
ferences found between Italian and English institutional promotion can be trans-

Across Languages and Cultures 15 (2) (2014)

 BOOK REVIEW 315

ferred to English-Hungarian contexts, with Hungarian on the Italian side. In a

similar vein, the sections on other self-promotional texts, showing how the vari-
ables of the communicative situation and cultural differences influence the syn-
tactic and lexical choices of the translator are enlightening indeed. Cultural dif-
ferences account for the need to increase or decrease the amount of promotional
boost in translation according to the conventions of the target language, both in
self-promotion (CVs) and tourist brochures etc. Some of the examples contain
rather subtle analyses of „shadow purpose” and „shadow target” (p. 97).
As a logical consequence of the functional approach, the author attaches
great importance to the translation brief. Since the translation of PATs is very
user-sensitive, assessing the expectations of the target audience cannot be the
responsibility of the translator alone. Translators must rely on their clients’ ex-
pectations and assessments of the target reader and, since clients know their
own purposes and the context of distribution best, translators must maintain
contact and negotiate decisions with their client. Torresi suggests that transla-
tors should ask clients to provide a translation brief (if they do not automatically
provide one), and negotiate it with them. Unlike in other types of translation,
here translators are allowed or even expected to offer the client alternative ver-
sions. Deciding on the best versions is then done jointly, often with the client
taking greater responsibility, paying attention to external factors such as space
and layout constraints, as beautifully shown by Torresi’s many examples cited
from her own professional experience. Joint „target profiling” is especially im-
portant in tourist promotion. In this way, she firmly anchors the process of
translation in the wider context of translation as a social activity.
Torresi does not go into a detailed explanation of theories, yet the book
provides an excellent starting point for discussing theoretical issues. Trainers, if
they wish to, may expand on the theoretical aspects of the book’s explanations
and examples. Thus, e.g., starting from the concept of information-to-
persuasion ratio, one may veer off into a general discussion of language func-
tions, speech acts, text types as classified by Reiss, etc. As a matter of fact, a
course in translation theory, using an inductive approach, could be built around
this book.
The book can also be exploited in training programs focused on translating
more specialized registers. My experience with such courses, focussed on one
and the same type of written text targeted at the same kind of reader, is that
there the full range of translation issues, including the cultural aspects of trans-
lation, are more difficult to demonstrate. It is less easy to impress on the stu-
dents the importance of the translation brief and to have them analyse text type,
style, purpose and audience: since most of the texts represent expert to expert
communication, they are fairly uniform, and the consequences of different con-
texts and different audiences on syntactic and lexical choices cannot be readily
demonstrated. If the students are asked to construct a translation brief for them-

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316 BOOK REVIEW

selves, it becomes mechanical, there is little variation. PATs are „consumer ori-
ented”, and their translation may be extremely useful in developing sensitivity
to variations in the target audience in courses focused on other text types.
Since the creative aspect in most specialized translation is missing, the
translation of one informative text after another may become rather boring. I
have found that students doing courses in various specialized registers enjoy
translating literary texts much more than translating the texts they are supposed
to. Trainers, of course, would feel guilty about using literary texts to teach spe-
cialized translation. Using PATs (related to the students’ specialization) may of-
fer a useful compromise, since they are midway between literary and special-
texts. They exhibit the full range of translation issues, allow more creativity and
are simply more interesting and motivating. At the same time, certain kinds of
PATs or certain parts of such texts, as explained in Torresi’s book, may have a
predominantly informative function, may contain terminology and may call for
a high degree of accuracy in translation.
It is very interesting to compare the translation of promotional and adver-
tising texts to the translation of texts belonging to more specialized registers. In
the former the translator must render accurately the function of the text, and
may omit, add or change the content, which is less acceptable in specialized
translation. This is especially well exemplified in the case of tourist brochures.
Torresi points out what must have been experienced by anyone who has studied
translations of tourist brochures, i.e. that often they talk to the national reader
and fail to adjust the style and the content to a specified target group with a dif-
ferent cultural background and different expectations of linguistic conventions.
The book includes discussion of such practical matters as non-linguistic
skills needed for promotional translators (agility, persuasiveness, creativity,
flexibility, knowledge of law and restrictions), the issue whether translators can
live off translation of PATs alone, It also gives many useful methodological
hints.
Summing up, this is a very useful resource book for translator training, de-
scribing the translation of a specific group of texts, having high potential of
transfer to other areas and providing a good basis for linking practice to theory.

Pál Heltai
Gödöllő, Hungary
E-mail: pal.heltai@gmail.com

References
Marzocchi, C. 2004. Review of Wagner, E., Bech, S. & Martínez, J. M. 2001. Translating for the
European Union Institutions. Across Languages and Cultures Vol. 5. No. 2. 283−293.

Across Languages and Cultures 15 (2) (2014)