TEACHING STUDENTS CREATIVE STRATEGIES FOR ENGLISH-UKRAINIAN ADVERTISING TRANSLATION

Abstract

The article presents the results of an empirical study aimed at examining the effectiveness of teaching creative strategies in English–Ukrainian translation of advertising texts to students of language specialties. Advertising discourse is approached as a pragmatically oriented type of institutional communication that combines linguistic, cultural, and persuasive components and is primarily designed to influence the target audience. Consequently, advertising translation requires not only formal equivalence but also functional and pragmatic adequacy, as well as a high degree of creativity and intercultural awareness on the part of the translator.

The methodological framework of the study is based on a competence-oriented functional approach that integrates principles of translation studies, discourse analysis, intercultural communication, and skopos theory. Particular attention is paid to such translation strategies as pragmatic adaptation, localization, compensation, and transcreation, which are considered essential for preserving the emotional, expressive, and persuasive potential of advertising messages.

The empirical part of the research involved 30 undergraduate students majoring in Philology and Secondary Education (English). The experimental training was conducted according to a stage-based methodology that included analytical, training, productive, and reflective stages. Students were asked to translate authentic English advertising slogans into Ukrainian and to justify their strategic choices.

The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the students’ translations demonstrated a clear predominance of creatively oriented strategies. Transcreation proved to be the most frequently applied strategy, followed by pragmatic adaptation, while literal translation was used significantly less often. The results indicate that creative strategies enable students to achieve communicative equivalence and to preserve the persuasive effect of advertising texts in the target language. The study confirms the effectiveness of the proposed teaching methodology and highlights its potential for developing translation, intercultural, and creative competences in future translators and English teachers.