英文广告语修辞特点及其翻译研究毕业论文英文版.doc

洛阳理工学院毕业设计（论文）
英文广告语修辞特点及其翻译研究

摘 要

随着经济全球化的发展，国际贸易活动日趋频繁，英语广告越来越重要。为了更具趣味性和说服力，英语广告常应用一些修辞手段增强语言的表达效果。广告的目的既为了宣传产品和激发消费者的兴趣，也为了加深人们对广告产品的印象，让品牌深入人心。要想使广告达到更好的宣传效果，就应该正确和恰到好处地运用各种修辞手段。修辞格使广告具有形象、生动、醒目等特点,充分展示了广告的魅力。在广告的翻译中，译者要注重广告的修辞风格，选择恰当的翻译方法灵活处理。本文将从修辞的角度，以实例分析广告语言的修辞特征及其翻译方法，并试图找出英汉广告翻译中处理修辞语言的有效方法。
关键词：英文广告语, 修辞特点, 广告语翻译

II

A Study on Rhetoric Characteristics and Translation of English Advertisements

ABSTRACT

With the development of economic globalization, international trade activities are becoming more frequent and English advertisement is increasingly important. English advertising often uses some rhetoric devices to enhance the effect of language expression to make it more interesting and convincing. The purpose of advertising is not only to promote products and stimulate consumers’ interest, but also to deepen people’s impression of the advertising products, making the brand win people’s support. In order to make the advertisement obtain better propaganda effect, it is necessary to use all kinds of rhetoric methods correctly and perfectly. Rhetorical devices make advertisement vivid, striking, fully demonstrating the glamour of advertisements. In advertising translation, the translators should pay attention to rhetoric style of advertising, choose appropriate translation methods flexibly. This paper analyzes rhetoric features and translation methods of the advertising language by examples and tries to find out the most effective methods of rhetoric translation in English advertising from the perspective of rhetoric.
KEY WORDS: English advertising language, rhetorical characteristics, advertising translation
洛阳理工学院毕业设计（论文）
Contents

Introduction 1
Chapter 1 A General Study of Advertisements 2
1.1 Classification of Advertisements 2
1.2 Functions and Requirements of Advertisements 2
Chapter 2 Rhetorical Devices in English Advertisements 5
2.1 Phonetic Rhetorical Devices 5
2.2 Lexical Rhetorical Devices 8
2.3 Syntactical Rhetorical Devices 12
Chapter 3 The Translation of Rhetoric in English Advertisements 16
3.1 Translation Criteria of English Advertising 16
3.1.1 Capability of Sales Promotion 16
3.1.2 Aesthetic Feeling 17
3.1.3 Originality 17
3.1.4 Cultural Adaptability 18
3.2 Common Methods Applied in English Advertisement Rhetoric Translation 19
3.2.1 Transliteration 19
3.2.2 Literal Translation 20
3.2.3 Meaning Implication 21
3.2.4 Creative Translation 22
Conclusion 24
Acknowledgements 25
Bibliography 26

26

Introduction

As foreign brands are increasingly flowing into the Chinese market and advertising is playing a more important role than ever before. English Advertising Texts (EAT) and their translation directly have influence on people’s choices of products and services. So how to understand and appreciate EAT and how to translate well in order that people can select the most desirable foreign goods. How do translators write EAT that cater to foreigners’ tastes and persuade them to buy Chinese products? The most effective way is to study major rhetoric characteristics of English advertisements and principles and strategies in translating. This research will help translators to gain powerful and influential English advertisements in order to effectively promote China-made products in the international market. Undoubtedly, this paper is of great practical value.
Many scholars at home and abroad have done researches of English advertising. Also, some scholars have studied translation from different perspectives, including economics, psychology, sociology and literary criticism, etc.
In this thesis, it mainly introduces basic advertising knowledge, especially advertising rhetoric characteristics and translation of English advertisements. The grasp of basic advertising knowledge may be helpful to understand, appreciate and even translate advertisements. Rhetorical devices are frequently used to describe abstract features or benefits of the advertisement brand to the consumers. In view of the significance of rhetoric in advertising, this thesis gives a brief introduction of translation methods of various rhetorical devices.

Chapter 1 A General Study of Advertisements

1.1 Classification of Advertisements
There are many kinds of advertising from different angles. By target audience, advertising can be divided into consumer advertising and business advertising. It can be mainly categorized into newspaper advertising, magazine advertising, radio advertising, television advertising, direct mail advertising, cinema advertising, package advertising and web advertising in light of the media. And by the purpose of seeking profits or not, it can be categorized into commercial advertising and non-commercial advertising. This thesis mainly deals with the written commercial advertising.

1.2 Functions and Requirements of Advertisements
Although there are many differences between Chinese and English in linguistics and culture, some common functions are similar in Chinese and English advertising.
Advertising tells us a great deal about our society, and helps to influence and change it. Although the first aim of the advertisement is to sell products, its function doesn’t stop there. Advertising is the first to reflect and stimulate social trends. Basically, advertising fulfills the following functions and they are marketing function, educational function, communicative function, economic function, societal function. Marketing function is served for public relations and personal selling along with sales promotion,advertising is used by a business oranorganization to communicate with its customers. Although advertising is only a part of the company’s overall promotional program, it is the most visible. For the communication Function, Advertising is a form of mass communication and it transmits different kinds of market information to offer for buyers and sellers in the market place. Advertisement informs and transforms the product by creating an image that goes beyond real facts. For the Economic Function, The market power and the market competition are two major schools about the effects of advertising on the economy. According to the market power school, marketers use advertising to distract consumers’ attention of the product price,which is a persuasive communication tool. In contrast, the market competition school regards advertising as a source of information and it increases consumers’ price sensitivity and stimulates competition. Economic function of advertising looks as helping society to acquire more by informing and persuading members of society about products, services and ideas. The Social Function. Advertising has many social functions and it tells us new and improved products and teaches us how to use these innovations. It inflects fashion and design trends and influences our aesthetic sense. For the educational function, advertising speeds the delivery of the new things and ideas, accelerates technology advances of industry and increases to create a merry and full life. But advertising must be more than educational to be successful. It must also be persuasive to move people to action, whether that action is the purchase of a different brand of breakfast cereal or regular attendance at church.
A successful advertisement should meet the following basic requirements to achieve its purpose, namely AIDMA, which will be given a brief analysis and it refers to Attention, Interest, Desire, Memory and Action. Attention is the easiest step to achieve. Consumers can know that a product exists in market through frequent advertisement. Interest can make consumers want to know about some of the features of the advertisement product. The advertisement may easily lose potential consumers if it cannot keep their attention because people’s attention is usually shifting. Desire means that a successful advertisement should convince the consumer of some important characteristics of products and advantages of making a purchase. In this way, the desire to buy the products may be kept in heart. Memory means that advertisement should be kept in mind and appreciated as a kind of art. This step finally results in customers’ unhesitating purchasing action after stimulating consumers’ desire. Action means that all the preceding four steps pave the way for the last step which is the final purpose of any commercial advertisements. In general, the customer may accept such product through a satisfied experience of the first trial.
From the above requirements of advertising, advertising is as a special art form, which has a completely different style from English essays or journalistic news. The most distinctive difference is the language characteristics and the structure, for both the language characteristics and the structure play the important roles in advertising persuasion. Then rhetorical characteristics are very important in the language characteristics.

Chapter 2 Rhetorical Devices in English Advertisements

A rhetorical figure is defined as an artful deviation in the form. Rhetorical figures have been catalogued, ranging from the familiar (rhyme, pun) to the obscure (antimetabole). This part introduces a framework for classifying rhetorical figures. Rhetoric is widely used in English advertising making it more attractive. However, Advertising language holds its own special and striking characteristic style in addition to the common language core and advertising language can not only to deliver information, but also to convey emotion, through which good advertisements usually achieve fundamental function---persuasive function. An important goal of advertising is not only to inform, but also to persuade consumers, it is not surprising that advertisement is used with different rhetorical devices. In this chapter, rhetorical devices used in advertising will be the phonetic, lexical and syntactical rhetorical devices.

2.1 Phonetic Rhetorical Devices
Advertisement usually depends on rhetoric to attract the readers’ attention and express its originality. Advertising English is sometimes quite standard, but more often it attracts attention by being colorful, vivid and imaginative. Thus, copywriters usually adopt some rhetorical devices such as alliteration, personification, repetition, hyperbole and pun, etc. Using of rhetorical devices is to make the advertisement more striking and effective, for they can vivify and illustrate. A new rhetorical device appeals to the imagination and creates pictures in heart and makes the writing or speech vivid, impressive and interesting. For this reason, advertisers often use various rhetorical devices to increase the readability and appealing of an advertisement and to arouse consumers’ interest of buying the product.
(1) Alliteration
Alliteration means “the repetition of initial identical consonant sounds or any vowel sounds in successive or closely associated words or syllables.”. Alliteration has been widely used in news reporting, advertisements, nonsense verse, tongue twisters, and jingles and so on. For example:
Sea, sun, sand, seclusion and Spain! You can have all this when you visit the new hotel Calient.
Soft and silky smooth, with a delicate fragrance and a light-refreshing feel. (Nulon hand cream)
In order to publicize the Spanish beach hotel and Nulon hand cream, both the above advertisements use the soft consonant “s” to make consumers have the radiant, smooth skin, and feel the quiet environment. When reading these two advertisements, consumers are likely to be enjoyed in the dream for such good cream and wonderful resort.
Here are some examples that also talk about the alliteration.
Uncrowded. Unspoiled. Under $800. One week hotel and airfare(French Airlines)
The perfect balance between beauty and brains. (Acer computers)
The above examples use alliteration. The first one means that French Airlines is not only inexpensive and can give consumers comfortable feeling which is uncrowded and unspoiled, but also just under $800 including One week hotel and airfare. The second example means that Acer computers not only have beautiful appearance but also brains. So it attracts consumers to buy Acer computers.
(2) Rhyming
Rhyme means repetition of sound existing between accented syllables occupying correspondence positions within two or more lines of verse. The correspondence of sound is based on vowels and continuing consonants of the accented syllables, which can be preceded by different consonants. For example, “late” and “date” produce perfect rhymes. Examples:
Let the train take the strain. (Railway)
This advertisement of British Railway Transportation Company wants to persuade people to take trains. Owing to the traffic congestion, people often feel intense and pressure when driving. Hence, the company suggests that people should take trains to relax themselves.
With foldable, reversible, removable and continuously adjustable seating... the new Espace is the ultimate luxury. (Renault cars)
Haier and Higher. (Haier Household Electrical Appliances)
Cheese with ease with Snack Mate. (Snack Mate Restaurant)
From the above advertisements, we may know that the rhetorical stress of rhyme is the vocal emphasis put upon those words or syllables in a sentence, which are the most important to the achievement of the purpose of the whole piece of writing.
Like alliteration, rhyme also serves to the reading effect of the language used in the advertisements. Accordingly, these advertisements are particularly effective because of rhyme schemes.
(3) Onomatopoeia
Developing from Greek, the word “onomatopoeia” means name making. In rhetoric, it means that the formation of names or words from sounds resembling those associated with the object or action to be named or seemingly and naturally suggestive of its quality. Onomatopoeia is usually used in descriptive writing to interrupt the visual description, for it is often felt difficult to understand. In onomatopoeia, the sense is expressed by the sound and thus makes the delicate and implicit diction to be conveyed to readers more directly in a sound way. The function of onomatopoeia in advertising can’t be ignored. Imitating the sound with the thing concerned, onomatopoeia is used in advertising for example, this kind of products have beer, clock, can opener and some machines. Onomatopoeia can result in vividness or subtleness and leave deep impression on the target audience.
Free yourself.
What’s with some hair care bands, saying this goes with that, which goes with this, blah, blah, blah.
There is only one line that mix and match for all the needs of your hair. Give your hair with style.
Salon Selective. Select your element of style. (Ibid:156)
Women like to express some amazing when talking about the cosmetics. In the light of this characteristic, the translators use such typical spoken language as “