谈日常用品广告英译汉的特色-文学学士毕业论文.doc

论文编号：

华南师范大学增城学院

本科毕业论文（设计）

题 目：谈日常用品广告英译汉的特色

姓 名：周燕雯
学 号：060114409
系 别： 外语系
专业班级： 商务英语
指导教师： 翁涛

2010年 4 月 21 日

On English-Chinese Translation Features of Daily Necessities’ Advertisements

A Thesis Submitted
to the Department of Foreign Languages
Zengcheng College of South China Normal University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts

By Zhou Yanwen
Tutor：Weng Tao

APR 21, 2010

Contents

Abstract i
中文摘要 ii
1. Introduction 1
1.1 Significance of the study 1
1.2 Research Questions and purpose of the study 1
1.3 Structures of the thesis 2
2.Literature Review 3
3. Description of Advertisements 5
3.1 Definition of an Advertisement 5
3.2 Main Functions of an Advertisement 5
3.3 Elements of an Advertisement 5
3.4 Definition of Daily Necessities’ Advertisements 6
4. Language Features of Daily Necessities’ Advertisements 8
4.1 Lexical words 8
4.2 Rhetorical Figures in Advertisement English 10
4.3 Syntactic Features 11
5. Translation Principles and Skills of Daily Necessities’ Advertisements 13
5.1 Conciseness 13
5.2 Smoothness 13
5.3 Literal translation and free translation 14
6. Conclusions 16
Bibliography 17
Acknowledgements 18

Abstract
With China's accession to the WTO，all increasing number of Chinese enterprises and commodities have the opportunity to enter the international market，but at the same time more and more foreign enterprises and their products are entering the domestic market.In market-competing battle，the most powerful weapon is advertisement．Every year many companies in different countries are to pay a large sum of money for the shaping of their corporate image and promote their own products. For both Chinese and foreign enterprises，there is all advertisement internationalization problem，that is product advertising translation Under this situation, it is very indispensable to translate the advertisement timely, correctly and efficiently to promote the information exchange both at home and abroad in order to improve the economic development.
Advertisements are not only an economic activity promoting sales and services, but also a carrier, which sets great influences on our life styles and consumption habits. Especially for the daily necessities, which is more common in our everyday life, we see the products everywhere; we use the products every minute; we watch the advertisements every means of broadcast. So that so far, it is very important for us to learn the characteristics of advertisement, and English to Chinese translation is a must to reach this goal.
This thesis focuses on the features of the language, especially for the words, rhetoric, sentences; and some basic principles that should be observed when translators try to translate the original advertisements. Such researches are served for the theme—daily necessities. Also, some methods are introduced good quality of advertising translation. This thesis aims at achieving a better understanding translation process and raising a positive influence on the research at home and abroad.

Key words: English advertisement; daily necessities; characteristics; translation
中文摘要
随着我国加入世界贸易组织，越来越多的中国企业和商品都有机会进入国际市场，但同时也有越来越多的外国企业及其产品不断进入国内市场。在这种产品市场的争夺战中，最有力的武器就是商业广告，各个国家，各个企业每年都会支付一笔庞大的费用用于塑造自己的企业形象、宣传自己的各种产品。在经济全球化的2l世纪里，广告宣传的国际化趋势将会越来越明显、越来越激烈。无论是中国企业还是外国企业，都存在着一个广告国际化、全球化问题即商品广告的翻译问题。
广告是一种经济活动，是对商品和服务的一种促销手段，但广告同时又是一种载体，它对人们的生活方式和消费习惯会产生一定的影响。特别是对日常用品广告，广告产品随处可见，时常使用广告产品；时常可见产品广告。由此可见，对于研究广告的特点显得异常重要，英译汉也凸显其达到目的的必要性。
本文介绍广告的语言特点，着重介绍其语言，修辞，句子，提出广告翻译中必须遵循的原则。以上所有研究都服务于文章主体--日常用品广告。同时，在论述提高广告翻译的质量时采用了一些翻译的方法。本文旨在使广告翻译者对广告翻译过程有更好的理解，以及对国内外的研究起到一定的积极作用。
关键字：英语广告；日常用品；特点；翻译

1. Introduction
1.1 Significance of the study
Advertisements are with us all the time: whenever we open a newspaper or a magazine, turn on the TV, or look at the billboards in the stations or on buildings, people are confronted with advertisements. It can be said that advertisements have penetrated almost every aspect of society.
What’s more, with opening up to the outside world, establishment of the socialist market system and China's entry into WTO, more and more foreign products have entered China's consumption market while English advertisements are rushing into our life. These famous world-renowned brands including Macdonald, Kodak and Coca-Cola can be seen everywhere. It seems that we are living a foreign life without going abroad. Since English advertisements play an important role in the modern social life, it is of great value to make the study of English advertisements and their translation. On one hand, it is necessary for people to be aware of some basic knowledge about English advertisements. Only in this way can people comprehend, appreciate and translate English advertisements better to fully achieve their communicative and commercial functions On the other hand, advertising translation has become one of the most important marketing strategies to many corporations.
Since advertising language forms direct communication between the producer and the target consumers, the content it conveys should be informative and persuasive to impress customers and get their ideas into buying action. To achieve the ideal effect, advertising translator should attempt to offer other customers a concise, elegant and attractive version of target text.

1.2 Research Questions and purpose of the study
Opposed to the long tradition of analysis in various kinds of advertisements translation, this thesis looks at the other side of the advertising translation by studying the characteristics of the daily necessities advertisements from English to Chinese translation and the basic principles, etc. Three research questions are asked in the study:
1) What are the features of the English to Chinese translation of daily necessities advertisements?
2) How to deal with the daily necessities advertisements translation well?
3) What are the principles of the English to Chinese translation of daily necessities?
The thesis will focus on the language features of English advertisements at wording characteristics, syntax and rhetorical devices. It is hoped that through the discussion of these three parts, the linguistic features of advertising English will be clearly illustrated and helps will be provided for those English learners in understanding and appreciating English advertisements.

1.3 Structures of the thesis
With the above part as all introduction to this thesis．the rest expands the theme ideas as follows：
Chapter Two Literature Review, about the study home and aboard.
Chapter Three Description of Advertisements describes the defintion, functions and elements of the advertisements.
Chapter Four Language Features of Daily Necessities’ Advertisements ,explores the language of advertising in terms of three levels：wording features，syntax features and figures of rhetoric of this thesis．
Chapter Five Translation Principles and Skills of Daily Necessities’ Advertisements is also the main concern of this thesis.
Chapter Six Conclusions ends with the conclusions and suggestions for further study．
9

2. Literature Review
2.1 Foreign Scholar’ Contributions
The study of language of advertising from a linguistic perspective has been attempted by several scholars(Leech 1966；Kumar 1978;Gopal 1980;Geis 1982; Vestergaard and Schrodder 1985)
Leech(1966),in his pioneering and comprehensive study on English in advertising．analyzed in detail different aspects pertaining to grammarvocabulary, discourse and rhyme and rhetoric of advertising with special reference to television． He effectively related these aspects to the functional factors such as attention Value, memorability and selling power．Illustration, display typography, vocal emphasis，prompt spelling，grammatical solcism，metaphor and paradox ale some of the aspects linked with attention value．Simple and colloquial style and familiar vocabulary are connected with readability．
Geis (1982) made an attempt to describe how language is used in American advertising, especially television advertising．He focused on certain linguistic devices that figure most prominently in advertising．
Vestergaard and Schroder (1985) studied the language use in commercial press advertising in relationship with communicative functions of language such as expressive，directive，informational, metalingual，interactional，comextual and poetic and the five advertising functions．
2.2 Chinese Scholars’ Contributions
In this field，Chinese scholars has not only assimilate foreign experts’research findings，but also pushed this study forward，in particular to the relationship between cross-culture and advertising English．Advertising English is one of the examples of English for special purposes，which demands the appropriate language to be equal to its functions or purposes．As to advertising functions，Ma Jianqing(1997)presented his AIDA theory in his book. The Psychology in Modern Advertising, in which he claims that AIDA is the most popular and classic theory in foreign countries．It represents the four English words：attention, interest, desire and action．Attention means that a good advertisement should get consumers’attention to its products, services or ideas．Interest means that the introduction of the advertising should arouse consumers’great interest in what is advertised in it．Desire means that the publicity of advertising should create consumers’desire to buy the products or accept the ideas．And action means that the advertisement can finally urge eonsurflers to take action of purchasing to satisfy their desirability, which is the ultimate purpose of advertising. AIDA is regarded not only as the principle of advertisement-making, but also as the consumers’psychological reflection in advertising process．
2.3 Their Shortcomings
Inspiring and pioneering as they are，their paradoxical ideas are still to be desired in some ways．First of all，their analysis of advertising language are based on the functions and characteristics of advertisements，i．e．，in terms of grammatical field．On the one hand，they place the description of advertising language merely in their native language and culture background，neglecting the cross—culture factors that are always affecting advertising language；on the other hand，their studies on differences between advertisements in English and Chinese are insufficient．This is especially true on the part of many foreign theorists who lack knowledge about the Chinese language and thus unable to envisage the potential difficulties in advertising translation．
In this thesis, I will take the focus on not only features of language,but also the translation aspects of English advertisements, especially in daily necessities.

3. Description of Advertisement
Advertisements are around us all the time and everywhere. They exist in all market systems and they are considered as an inseparable part of the human society and people’s daily life. In order to have a better understanding of the basic knowledge about advertisements, we need to start our study from advertisement’s definition, primary functions and components. All the above-mentioned topics will be covered in this chapter.

3.1 Definition of an Advertisement
“Advertisement” originates from a Latin word “advertere” that means “to inform somebody of something”, namely to attract the public’s attention to a certain object or a thing. Generally speaking, advertising is a means to transfer information with an aim to propaganda and promote the selling of the products or services or affect the public’s opinion.
Albert Lasker, the father of modern advertisement, gives the definition as follows: “advertisement is salesmanship in print, driven by a reason why”. Because this definition was given long before the advent of radio and television, the nature and scope of advertisement were considerably restricted. But it is obviously indicated that the fundamental goal of advertisement is to promote the selling.
In Longman Contemporary English-Chinese Dictionary (Sally Wehmeier, 1988:26), “advertisement is the business which concerns itself with making known to the public what is for sale and encouraging them to buy, especially by means of pictures in magazines, notices in newspapers and messages on television”.
All in all, no matter what kind of definition is given, it is commonly indicated in all the definitions that English advertising is a kind of communication in which information is offered in English language and various means to persuade or influence the consumer to purchase.

3.2 Main Functions of an Advertisement
Advertisements are used by the advertiser to propaganda a certain product or service, to impose enough influence on the potential consumers to persuade them of the rightness of purchasing the product or service. By means of advertisement, the advertiser can achieve the final goal of promoting sales of the product or popularize the use of the service.

3.3 Elements of an Advertisement
As one will see, any advertisement is made up of several elements. Most advertisements used all of them. They include the headline or display line; the illustration; the body copy or text; the theme line or slogan, trade character, seal, and other marks; and the logotype or signature. Each will be considered in some detail below.
(1) Headlines
The headline or display line appears in most advertisements for several reasons. First, it is an attention-getting device; secondly, it also selects an audience by appealing to a specific group, as this line dose: Arthritics reduce painful inflammation and get stomach upset protection. (An ad for medicine) Finally, it is the key factor in getting people to read the body copy.
(2) Illustration
In addition to headlines, most advertisements contain illustrations. The illustration like the headline, attracts attention, selects the audience, and stimulates interest in body copy. What is more, the illustration can be invaluable in showing the product or product use and explaining graphically certain ideas or situations that are cumbersome to put into words. The old saying that one picture is worth a thousand words has much merit in it.
(3) Body Copy
To begin with, some explanation of the word copy is necessary. The job of body copy is to stimulate interest in the product or service or idea being advertised, creates desire for it, and urge action. This is a big task and calls for right words. Although headlines and illustrations clear the way, it is body copy that must carry the burden of the selling job.
(4) Theme lines, slogan, trade characters, seal and other marks
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