Translation and cultural mediation: The case of advertising in Canada

This study is based on a computerized corpus of advertisements published in the last twenty five years in North American magazines, and the translations of these advertisements for the French Canadian readership. Drawing primarily on work published in the area of cultural studies and on such concepts as low/high context cultures, high/low power distance cultures, universalism/particularism, individualism/collectivism, monochronic/ synchronic cultures, etc., this paper analyses some differences between the North American advertisements and their translated versions in the following areas : dietary practices, relationship between addresser and addressees, and social interactions.