Features of English Advertisement and Principles and Strategies of Its Translation英文广告特点及翻译原则与策略contentAbstract(English).............................................................................. 错误!未定义书签。
Abstract(Chinese) .. (iii)Introduction (1)Chapter 1 Features of Commercial Advertisement (3)1.1 Features of advertising words (3)1.2 Structure of advertising sentences (5)1.3 Rhetorical features in advertisements (7)Chapter 2 Comparison of English and Chinese advertisement (10)2.1 Phonological Difference (10)2.2 Semantic Difference (11)2.3 Difference of Figure of Speech (12)Chapter 3 Principles and strategies of Advertisement Translation (14)3.1 General principles of advertisement translation (14)3.2 Typical translation techniques of English advertisement (16)Conclusion (20)Bibliography (21)AbstractNida’s Functional Equivalence Theory focuses on the reaction of readers to the translation. This theory can be used to guide the translation of advertising English. The main point of advertisement translation lies in the embodiment of cultural factors because culture inevitably affect people’s thought and their attitude towards everything. That how well the translation is accepted depends on how much it demesticates the cultural factors. Therefore translators should observe the three principles of smoothness, preciseness and conciseness when doing advertisement translation. As to the choice of strategies, literal and free translation can be chosen according to different text, on condition that it can reach a desire effect.In chapter one the thesis analyses in the characteristics of commercial English from three points of view. Then in chapter two it contrasts English and Chinese commercial from the point of view of the differences of the two ideographic systems so that it advances certain basic theory for the translation of commercial advertisements. Meanwhile it informs translators of the difference of English and Chinese advertisements in order to avoid being confined by language barriers. In chapter three some principles and basic skills of advertisement translation are put forward against the problems existing in the current translation of advertisements.Through the analysis of successful advertisements and their translation, a natural conclusion can be drawn that cultural factors play a very important part in advertisement translation. There it is necessary for a translator to have a good knowledge of the cultural defferencesKey words: advertisement translation; cultural difference; principles; strategies摘要奈达的功能对等翻译理论重视目的语读者对译文的反应。
这一理论可以用来指导广告英语的翻译。
英汉广告的翻译，重点在于文化要素的体现上。
因为文化因素不可避免的要影响到人们的思维习惯以及对一切事物的态度。
译文被目的语读者所接受的程度，取决于其在文化因素上的归化程度。
因此译者在翻译英语广告时，要遵循流畅，准确，简洁的三原则；而在翻译策略的选择上要注意根据不同的广告选用不同的策略，可直译，也可意译，只要能够达到理想的效果。
本文第一章借用大量的实例来分析商业广告在词汇、句式以及修辞三方面的特点；第二章从英汉对比的角度，对比分析英汉商业广告的异同，为商业广告翻译提出一定的基础理论，也让译者能够注意到英汉广告的不同，从而在翻译时能做到不被语言障碍所牵绊。
第三章结合实例提出一些翻译时应该遵循的原则以及一些基本的翻译方法。
通过研究成功的广告英语及其翻译的案例，有助于学习和借鉴境外企业广告的成功经验，以便更好地为国内企业和产品走向国际市场服务。
关键词：商业广告翻译；文化差异；翻译原则；策略IntroductionAs the opening-up process accelerates in China, especially after the success of Beijing Olympics, more and more domestic corporations have the opportunity to enter international market. At the same time, more and more foreign enterprises keep entering domestic market. Under this situation advertisement becomes the most effective way of publicizing products. Every corporation in every country annually defrays a large amount of expense to build its image and publicize its product or service. In 21st century the globalization of advertisement will become more and more overt. both domestic and foreign corporations have to face the problem of internationalizing advertisement, or translating of advertisement.The word advertisement first appeared in ancient English. It originated from the Latin word “advertere”,which means “to make people pay attention to something”. But it was not widely used until 17th-century prosperity of commerce in England. Although currently there are many different definitions of advertisement, they reach an agreement on the nature of advertising, which is to attract the attention of consumers so as to promote the sales of products.American Marketing Association (AMA) defines advertising as “the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through various media.” It can be concluded from the definition that a successful advertisement should be persuasive. According to Tony, president of the DM9 DDB Advertising Company, people are afraid to buy products that they never heard of and do not know the company(see 王晨, 2007:107). Hence , industries and organizations emphasize a lot on modern English advertising, whileadvertisers try every means to do their best to make impressive advertisement in order to create and enhance an positive image of a brand for the company and add values to their products.In modern times advertising has influenced people pervasively in daily life with the development of technology and the diversity of mass media. Advertisers have more choice in making their advertisement appeal to consumers. However, whatever the promotive strategies advertising takes, language is the main carrier of message. Therefore it is necessary for a translator to know well of the features of adverting English if he wants to make a good translation.Chapter 1 Features of Commercial Advertisement Advertisement serves for the purpose of introducing commodity or service to consumers, therefore it must be made to cater to the public taste. Generally speaking, a good advertisement has features of being brief, easy to remember, and so on. If a translator wants to do a good job in advertisement translation, it is necessary and very important for him to know of advertisements’ features. In this chapter, these features are to be analyzed from three different angles.1.1 Features of advertising wordsThe English used in commercial advertisement is laconic, vivid, emotional and impressive. Therefore the diction of commercial advertisement has relatively much difference from common English.1.1.1. Use of adjectivesAdjectives have the property of being emotional and impressive. Their function is to describe and modify nouns. Therefore they become the most suitable words for advertisement. Advertisers tend to use large quantities of commendatory evaluating adjectives in advertisement so as to enhance the attractiveness of the product being advertised. Take an advertisement as an example:Example (1) Famous world-wide gourmet cuisine. Excellent daily specials and mouth-watering desserts.This is an advertisement for a restaurant. It is obvious that adjectives account for a half of the words used in it. It is a typical example of the use of adjectives.Sometimes manufacturers want to show that their product or service is better than their competitors. In order to achieve this goal, they will useadjectives of comparative or superlative degree. Although they do not directly debase competitors out of fair competition, consumers will be convinced that their product is the best one to meet their needs. For example, there is never been a better Time. It is an advertisement for Time magazine. It implies the readers that Time is the best magazine they have ever seen.G. N. Leech (1965) once made an investigation on advertising words. According to his statistics the most frequently used words are adjectives. Especially those with positive meaning are favorite of advertisers, such as new, fresh, delicious, and so on. (See 方梦之, 2003:208)1.1.2. Use of monosyllabic verbsBesides adjectives, momosyllabic verb is a good choice for advertisers. In order to make the advertised information easily understood and remembered, advertisers usually employ simple words, especially monosyllabic verbs in their advertisements. Such words as “make, get, try, take, come, go, have, need” are often found in English advertisements. Here is an example:Example (2) Start aheadThis is an advertisement for the shampoo Rejoice. By the word start, advertisers imply to consumers that they will refresh themselves and have a new start if they use Rejoice to wash their hair.In English, short words are usually the most familiar and therefore the most easily understood by a wide range of readers. Moreover, most short English words are of Anglo-Saxon origin. These words can generate greater emotion than their Latinate equivalents, hence maximize impact. The high frequency of monosyllabic verbs also helps to make the advertisements more persuasive.1.1.3. Use of made-up and novel wordsSince the purpose of advertisement is to persuade the audience to purchase, the novelty of advertisement is an important factor to attract them. A made-up and novel word can stimulate customers’ curiosity. Here is an example: Example (3) The Orange mostest Drink in the worldIt is an advertisement for orange juice. Obviously the “mostest”in the advertisement is a made-up word. In English most is a word of superlative degree. “-est”is an affix denoting superlative degree. It is ungrammatical to form a new word by combining “most”and “-est”. But the word is quite appropriate because the advertiser implies to customers that the quality and purity of the juice is unparalleled and only a word most is not enough to modify it.1.2 Structure of advertising sentences1.2.1 Replacing the whole sentence with words or phrasesIn order to achieve the effect of abbreviation and being refined, many kinds of phrases, including noun phrases, participial phrases and adverbial phrases and so on, are used in advertisements to express infinite thoughts and meanings, thus to achieve the desired effect.Example (4)A world of comfort. ―Japan AirlinesA work of art. ―Scotch WhiskyBoth the two advertisements are neatly designed. They succeed in impressing consumers with brevity. Although there are only four letters in these two advertisements, they will make customers to be confident in the quality of the product and service.1.2.2 Wide use of simple sentences, sentence segments and elliptical sentencesBecause the text of advertisement is largely restricted by length and time, an advertisement designer must use the most possibly few words to most effectively convey information and attract people’s attention. So simple sentences, sentence segments, or elliptical sentences are most frequently used.Example (5)No caffeine. Virtually no calories. Just a unique, sparkling citrus taste. ―Fresca Coke adds life. ―Coca Cola 1.2.3 Use of imperative sentencesImperative sentences are very important in advertising language. The purpose of advertisement is to persuade readers or listeners to take action to purchase. This is just the function of imperative sentences. Therefore they are often used in advertising English. There are numerous advertisements that are in the form of imperative sentences, among which several classic ones are taken as examples.Example (6)Catch that Pepsi spirit. Drink it in. ―PepsiCome to where the flavor is. Come to Marlboro Country ―Marlboro 1.2.4 Use of interrogative sentencesThe function of interrogative sentences is to attract listeners’ attention. This function can fulfill the purpose of advertisements. The questions used in advertisements helps a lot in impressing readers and motivating them to purchase. The following is an example:―Who can tell that builds the best family wagon?―Put them to test ―Chrysler corporation1.3 Rhetorical features in advertisementsAs far as meanings concerned, advertisements should be informative, expressive, and directive. Although the purpose of advertisement is to persuade consumers to buy the product, a successful advertisement does not always praise themselves directly. On the contrary, the commercial motive should be hidden cleverly. Or it will make readers take a scunner against the advertisement and even the product. A good advertiser knows how to avoid this situation. They neatly use figure of speech to publicize the advertised product.Advertisements often resort to various rhetorical means to achieve special effects, such as pun, metonymy, parody, personification. In advertising English, rhetorical skills occupy an extremely important place and with these skills, advertisement becomes richer than ever in its expression and much more persuasive.1.3.1 PunA pun can be defined as “the use of words that have more than one meaning or words that have the same sound but different meanings”(Liu Miao, Jia Dejiang, 2005:146). Puns are very popular with advertisers, for they may easily provoke amusement, or add spice to an unpretentious conversational exchange. Example (7)：Seven-up… the un cola. The un and only ―7-up DrinkIn this advertisement, pun lies in “un”. On the one hand, “un” is negative prefix in English. “uncola”is coined to strike the reader as “being totally different from traditional cola”. On the other hand, “un”, a French word, is close to English word “one” in meaning. So “the un and only” here equals to English idiom “the one and only”, emphasizing the superiority of this drink.1.3.2 MetonymyMetonymy is defined as a figure of speech which expresses a relation between the thing spoken and the thing meant, in such a way that the mention of one suggests the other. Example (8):Wash the big city out of hairIt is an advertisement for a kind of shampoo. In the advertisement “the big city”means “the dirt of the hair”. Thus the use of a metonymy avoids the embarrassment of a plainly mentioning “the dirt of the hair”and shows its elegant style, evoking a good feeling in its readers.1.3.3 ParodyA parody is “an imitation of the characteristic style of a writer, or of a literary work, designed to amuse or ridicule”(Liu Miao, Jia Dejiang, 2005:146). Parody is widely used in advertising headlines and slogans by imitating idioms, proverbs, sayings, songs, and so on.The following slogan about Mars Candy Bar is a fine example typifying the employment of parody in advertising English. Example (9)：A Mars a day keeps you work, rest and playThe structure of this sentence and its end rhyme may easily remind readers the proverb “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”. While the words “work”and “play” may also elicit the association of another familiar proverb “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. Thus this slogan does not only imitate two commonly known proverbs in form but also is invested with associative meanings. The employment of such a parody helps convey vividly to audience the message that eating a Mars a day will make you clever and healthy.1.3.4 PersonificationPersonification is generally used to give human qualities or abilities to abstractions or non-human entities. Personification in advertising turns the ice-cold products to be cordial and friendly and leaves people a vivid and real impression. Example (10)：With 52 issues, they will be thinking of you week after week.This is an advertisement for Newsweek, in which issues of the magazine are personified. The Newsweek magazine is described vividly to “think of” the readers “week after week”. And in return the readers will think of the magazine week after week.Chapter 2 Comparison Between English and ChineseadvertisementThe differences of historical conditions, geographic locations, natural environment and social reality formed cultures of unique characteristics and styles. This is true of English and Chinese. They belong to quite different language families. Chinese is one of the several existing pictographic characters, while English is a kind of alphabetic language. Most of the elements are not the same. If a translator will do the translation between the two languages, he should pay attention to these differences. Many cases of advertisement translation prove that whether a translation is successful or not eventually depends on if the translator can notice these differences and avoid being fettered by them.2.1 Phonological DifferenceAs is mentioned above, Chinese is one of several existing pictographic characters while English is a kind of alphabetic language. They differ from each other in many aspects. The first and most basic element differing from each other is phonology. English and Chinese have different characteristics in phonology.Words of alphabetic languages use grapheme as visual symbols that map onto phonemes of the spoken language and follow grapheme-to-phoneme conversion rules. Alphabetic words thus are predominantly read out by assembling fine-grained phonemic units, for example, by assembled phonology.Written Chinese uses characters as basic writing units that possess a number of intricate strokes packed into a square configuration. The Chinese characters often have their meaning suggested by visual shapes. They map onto phonology at the monosyllable level. There are no parts in a charactercorresponding to phonological segments such as phonemes. Although 85 percent of present-day Chinese characters are compounds containing a phonetic component that can give information about the pronunciation of the compound. The estimates of the validity of this information reveal that only 28 percent of phonetic components sound the same as their resultant whole characters. Moreover, it is never the case in Chinese that a phonetic component maps onto a subsyllabic phonological representation in the way that a letter maps onto a substring of a word’s phonological form in an alphabetic system (Perfetti et al. 2005).2.2 Semantic DifferenceThe most obvious obstacle in spreading cross-cultural advertisement is the difference of word meaning. The meaning here is not only the literal one of the word. It also includes the word’s denotation. This aspect of word meaning has something to do with culture differences. As is known to all, language is a carrier of culture. Different cultural conventions determines that word denotations are different even the words refer to the same thing. Therefore a good understanding of the characteristics of the country where the advertisement will be broadcast is quite necessary. A translator certainly can rely on the explanations in dictionaries. But that is not enough. Because the explanations in dictionaries are merely literal ones. They can not tell the translator the current situation of target country.For example, a kind of exported dry battery named “白象” was translated into English phrase “a white elephant”. From the viewpoint of literal meaning, this translation is perfect. But it is not a successful translation because the phrase “a white elephant”in English has a set meaning of “waste things”. Thetranslation leaves native readers a bad impression of the dry battery, let alone persuades them to buy it.Sometimes in the course of translation translators will find a strange situation that a word representing the same concept or thing has implication in certain language system. However, this implication is not easy to see in another language system, for example, in American streets people sometimes see a kind of cars with painting “I am yellow”, but the cars are actually not the color yellow. This made many Chinese people confused about that. They do not understand what it means. As a matter of fact, the “yellow”here refers to another two meanings. One is taxi and the other is timid. So it is obvious that “I am yellow”should be translated as “I am a taxi”. It can be seen as a self-recommended advertisement of taxi.2.3 Difference of Figure of SpeechAs is mentioned in chapter one, although the purpose of advertisement is to persuade consumers to buy the product, a successful advertisement do not always praise themselves directly. On the contrary, the commercial motive should be hidden cleverly. Or it will make readers take a scunner against the advertisement and even the product. A good advertiser knows how to avoid this situation. They neatly use figure of speech to publicize the advertised product.However, figures of speech of advertising language are also connected with a country’s language customs and living experiences. For example, the English advertisement “Fit is Best”is concise and meets the rules of rhyming. It is a good advertisement. But when it is translated into Chinese, it becomes “合适的就是最好的”. Obviously it is much worse than the original one, because the rhyming of the English advertisement no longer exists in the Chinese version.There is in a famous drink brand named “健力宝”in China. Its advertisement is “要想体力好常饮健力宝”. The Chinese characters “好” and “宝” form a rhyme with the pronunciation “ao”. So it is very easy for people to recite the advertisement and remember the brand. But its English version is “If you wish physically stout, please often drink Jianlibao”. Obviously the English version can not influence readers as the Chinese version does. If the translator wants to make the English version appeal to English speakers, he may translate it as “A Jianlibao a day keeps the doctor away”, a parody of the well-known saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”. Then it is easier for English speakers to get familiar with the drink.Proper use of figure of speech can bring great influence to readers, catch their attention immediately, stimulates their desire of buying things and enhance their sense of safety and public welfare. The most commonly used figure of speech is pun. It is also a problem that is hard to solve in advertising translation of English and Chinese, for it is very difficult to express the meaning of pun of the original text especially when there are words with different meanings. For example, an English traffic advertisement reads “The driver is faster when the road is dry; the road is faster when the driver is dry”. In the advertisement the key word is “dry”. It has two meanings, “干燥” and “未饮酒（清醒）”. So the whole Chinese translation is “路面干燥，司机安全；司机清醒，道路安全”. The pun in the original text can not be seen in the Chinese version.Chapter 3 Principles and strategies of AdvertisementTranslation“If the purpose of the translation is to keep function of the text invariant, function markers often have to be adapted to target-culture standards”(Nord, 1997:45)The translation of advertisement is a kind of cross-culture communication. Since the purpose of advertisements is to persuade the readers to purchase, how to exploit the special function in the target advertisements is the most important thing for translators. According to a practical course in English-Chinese translation (何三宁，2006:202), a translator is comparatively free in how to do the translation. In other words, there are a few translating methods, such as free translation, literal translation, and so on. If a translator is accredited to translate an advertisement into another language for the purpose of foreign trade, there are some general principles he has to observe. Then on the basis of these principles, He puts forward several translating skills. In the following discussion these skills will be elaborated through the analysis of cases.3.1 General principles of advertisement translationAdvertisement is a media to publicize product or service, so its content must be based on the usage, quality and specialty, etc. No matter what kind of language skills is used in an advertisement, the translator should observe the three principles, namely smoothness, precision and conciseness, in order to achieve the purpose of advertisement.3.1.1 SmoothnessSmoothness means to use smooth and natural Chinese expressions that Chinese customers can accept to give the information about a product. Whether the translation of an English advertisement is excellent or not depends on the response of its receivers. Only when the Chinese readers’response to the translation is similar to the original readers’response to the original advertisement, will the translation achieve its purpose. Therefore it is very important for a translator to get a good knowledge of Chinese convention and consumers’ psychology.English advertisement differs from Chinese advertisement in many aspects due to the differences of culture. Take an advertisement of cigarette advertisement as an example:Example (11)：Cigarette by John Player, EnglandIn English, the word group linking two noun phrases by the preposition “by” is usually used to describe the artistic and creative activities. Advertisers often use this structure to present the information of “unique and peculiar quality” of the product, and indicate that the person who chooses it has artistic taste. However it is no easy task to translate the advertisement into authentic Chinese. If the translator rigidly adheres to the original form and renders it into “英国普莱尔的香烟”, it is difficult to stimulate the Chinese consumers’ desire to buy the cigarette. As is discussed above, the Chinese-four-character compounds are well accepted by the Chinese people. So it can be translated into “普莱尔香烟，精细做工，口味独特，与众不同”(何恩，2005:45). This is much better than the literal translation because the four-Chinese-character phrase is a favorite of the Chinese people.3.1.2 PrecisionLike smoothness, precision is also demanded by the advertisement’s functions. If the meaning of the original advertisement were altered in the translation, the consumers would be misled by the Chinese version.3.1.3 ConcisenessConciseness means the translator should use informative and concise diction and sentence structures. The educational background of the readers are varied; so far too complicated or difficult diction or sentence structures in translation may make it hard for its intended readers to comprehend its information.3.2 Typical translation techniques of English advertisementAs the purpose of advertisement translation is to introduce high-quality foreign commodities to domestic market, it is necessary for translators to employ typical skills when doing translation.3.2.1 TransliterationTransliteration is to write a word, a name, or a sentence in the alphabets of a target language or writing system according to the pronunciation of the original expression (何三宁, 2006:202). Transliteration is also often adopted in the translation of brand names, the names of firms, and so on.It has to be admitted that absolutely pure transliteration is very difficult. Moreover, consumers cannot get to know the characteristics of a product just from the transliteration of its brand which has no actual meaning but only reproduces a similar pronunciation as the original. Such a translation just uses a brand name to represent a product. Generally speaking, most transliterated brand names are well-known popular ones Chinese consumers, such as Kodak(柯达),Rolex(劳力士), and so on.Sometimes advertisers use partial transliteration plus interpretation in advertisement to render a brand so that the consumers can know its original name while understanding its meaning in the source language. For example, there is a brand of bolstered seat which is specially designed for people with a chronic back pain. Its Chinese version is “背舒尔” which accounts for both its original pronunciation and meaning. The Chinese consumers can get an idea of the function of this product merely at the sight of this brand name.3.2.2 Literal translationLiteral translation is to translate the source text literally into Chinese and keep the same sentence structure and word order as the original(何三宁, 2006:202). Literal translation is often used in the translation of titles, slogans and texts of advertisements. Example (12)：Don’t just get onto it, get into it. ----Intel PIII Personal Computer This is an advertisement for Intel Corporation. The ingenuity of this advertisement consists in the use of two phrases: “get onto” and “get into”. “Get onto” means “to communicate with someone”. “Get into” means “to influence or take control of someone or something so as to make them act strangely”. These two phrases have a subtle difference in meaning but their presence in the advertisement suggests the virtue of the high speed of Intel PIII computer. What the advertiser wants to tell people is that “You can not only be on line but do whatever you want to on the internet”. So it can be literally translated into “不仅仅是登陆互联网，而且是真正畅游其中”(何三宁, 2006:203). Such a translation is clear enough but it seems too flat and insipid.3.2.3 Liberal translationIt may be impossible for some English advertisements to be translated into。