【正文】 1 1. Introduction With the development of economy globalization, more and more products rushed into the international market, it gives consumers enough space to make choices. Therefore, the first impression of a particular product on the consumers will have a farreaching effect. As a product in domestic market, the first impression is mostly produced by its trademark, while for those in overseas market, by the trademark translation. A novel and proper translation of trademark can catch the attention of consumers at the first sight, arouse their curiosity and interest, and further stimulate their expectations and desire. While some improper translation cannot function well and convey the necessary messages to the target consumers, which will unfavorably affect the market promotion. However, trademark translation is not easy, different nations have different cultures, culture deeply influences people’s attitude to their life, even consuming. The cultural differences between the original text and the target language often lead to some barriers in translation. Translation without dealing well with barriers is to result in cultural loss or misunderstanding. So, it is of great importance to find out the differences in culture. This paper attempts to explore some cultural differences in trademark translation reflected in social background, value systems, customs and habits, then some strategies and techniques would be adopted in trademark translation. 2. Culture Trademark Translation of Culture Culture differs from each other and each culture is unique. As to its definition, different studies have given many definitions of culture from different aspects. The most widely accepted one was given by Edward Tylor—a British scholar in 1871. He defined culture as “a plex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, custom, 2 and any other capabilities and habits acquired by individuals as members of a society.” Generally speaking, people from two different countries have different understanding of culture. And language is the carrier of culture. It is an essential and important part of a given culture and that the impact of couture on language is something intrinsic and indispensable. Trademark language embodies the characteristics of both language and culture. Therefore, a trademark translator should pare the cultures and languages before he translates it. Translation without the consideration of culture may lead to barriers and result in cultural loss or misunderstanding. of Trademark An authoritative definition of trademark is given by OXFORD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English as follows: A trademark is a name, symbol or design that a pany uses for its products and that cannot be used by anyone else: ‘Big Mac’ is McDonald’s bestknown trademark. Along with the development of economic globalization and increasing international contact, trademarks have bee more and more important. A trademark is a modity worth a large sum of money nowadays, such as CocoCola, Microsoft and 紅塔山 are worth $ billion, $ billion and 46 billion RMB respectively. In some degree, a trademark is the representative image of a pany, embodying the enterprise culture, technology and its credit. With various products peting in the world market, trademarks also embody different cultures of different nations. They are the direct advertisement of an enterprise and one of the most effective is to arouse the potential consumers’ interest to promote sales. So a trademark is of great importance to the enterprises. The Relationship Between Culture and Trademark Translation Translation can also be called a “cultural translation”, because culture factor is taken into consideration. Cultures differ from each other and each culture is unique, so it is of great importance for translators to be aware of the cultural differences between Chinese and the Western languages. And trademarks are the windows to show the national culture to other countries. Therefore, one of the most important tasks of transfer is to solve the 3 problems caused by cultural differences in the process of trademark translating. A proper translation has a power to persuade consumers to buy the products。 on the contrary, an improper translation inevitably makes a great economic loss. For example, in Chinese culture, “白象” (literally meaning white elephant) is a trademark of batteries. The word “白象” will gives people the feeling of “clean and lovely animal”. When “白象 ” was used for a trademark, it was soon accepted by most of Chinese people. However, in English culture, “White Elephant” symbolizes something useless. So people from the Western countries may not buy a product that is useless. Obviously this English version referring to the culturespecific feature conveys the conceptual meaning that does not exist in Chinese culture. Even though there are translation equivalents in Chinese to this English phrase, they are quite different in cultural connotation. Function of Trademark Translation A good translation is not only an accurate transformation of the two different languages, but a good rewriting or creating of the original text, which requires the translator be able to convert the denotation and connotation, as well as the cultural information of the original adequately. It is an effective tool that the marketers use to attract and persuade customers to buy the modities. It is a bridge between the target customers and marketers, so it should fulfill some functions as below: Firstly, the informative function. A good trademark and its translation is an effective form of advertising, which can provide customers with sufficient information of products and give them hard sales and convey the cultural information as well. To some extent, a