La traducción de anuncios multilingües: un reto para el traductor del siglo XXI

This article aims to present multilingual advertising from the point of view of translation. In particular, I will focus on the case of the Spanish airline Vueling whose signature feature is the mixture of languages in its advertising campaigns. The method of analysis used in this study will be the pragmalinguistic model used by Hickey (1999) in the translation of humorous texts since humor is the main function of Vueling advertisements. This model is based upon the individual analysis of each one of the three elements in the speech act (locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary) of the source text in order to render a translation triggering the same effects on the target reader as the ones provoked on the source reader. This method of analysis will be applied to several examples of ads as well as their translations into English. The main conclusions of this study show the importance of stylistic equivalence in this type of translations—sometimes over semantic and pragmatic equivalences—since it is precisely the code-switching feature and the formal contrast that produces on the reader what creates the comical effect so characteristic of these campaigns.