A Study on Translation of English Advertising Slogan英语广告口号翻译

A Study on Translation of English Advertising Slogan这篇本科毕业论文自己手写的，可以通过 知网 学术不端检测系统 （防抄袭系统）。总文字复制比 （抄袭率）为2.3。 现在贡献给需要的人。AbstractAdvertisement , as a bridge leading to business communication ,is bound to play a more and more important role . People from different country and cultural backgrounds must understand foreign advertisements. So it is extremely important for us to study on the translation of advertisements. This thesis focuses on the translation of English advertising slogans. The differences between Chinese and English are an obstacle in advertising slogan translation because specific means of rhetoric and some special sentence types in Chinese or English have no equivalence in its target language. This thesis tries to propose several translation strategies to guide the translation of advertising slogans and discuss the culture differences we should take into consideration when we translate English advertising slogans.In this thesis ,the focus is advertising slogans. First , the thesis will give an account of generalization on English advertising slogans, including linguistic definition of advertising slogans. In the second part of this thesis, it focuses on the characteristics of English advertising slogans. The emphasis was put on structural lexical and rhetoric features of advertising slogans. In those parts, there are not only statements of the academic opinions of this thesis, but also abundant instances to illustrate the views. The account of these features are very important as pavement of the later opinions about how to translate advertising slogans. In part three, it mainly discusses the three different methods to translate advertising slogans. They are literal translation, free translation and adaption translation. In different circumstances we use specific way to translate the slogan. Also, there are rich examples to illustrate the rules to translate advertising slogans. The analysis in detail will help you to understand the rules.Key words: advertisement slogan; translation; feature, culture difference. 摘 要广告，作为国际商业交流的一座桥梁，将会在世界经济的舞台上扮演越来越重要的角色。来自不同文化背景的人都需要接触外国的广告，所以关于广告的翻译研究具有重大的意义。这篇论文主要研究了英文广告口号的翻译。中文和英文都有自己独特的修辞和句型，因此在英文广告口号的翻译中，中英文的语言差异是一大障碍。这篇论文研究了几条关于英语口号翻译的实用策略。也提出了关于在翻译中如何处理文化差异问题的一些观点。这篇论文的主题是广告口号的翻译。首先，文章阐述了对英语广告口号的学术定义。其内容包括广告语口号的语言学定义等。在论文的第三部分，论述了一些英语广告口号的特点。这一部分的重点阐述了广告口号的结构、词汇、修辞特点。文中不仅有学术观点，还有丰富的例子解释说明相关观点。广告口号的特点这一部分为下文的翻译方法做了学术铺垫。在四部分，主要讨论了翻译广告口号的几个主要的方法，他们分别是直译，意译和变译。根据具体情况选用不同的翻译方法。这一部分也包含了丰富的例子和详细的分析来诠释这些翻译方法。关键词：广告口号，翻译，特点，文化差异 ContentsAbstracti摘 要iiA Study on Translation of English Advertising Slogans1.Introduction1.Generalization on English Advertising Slogans2 Characteristics of English Advertising Slogans32.1 Structure32.2 Lexical Feature32.3 Rhetoric Features in the Advertising Slogan5 Translation Methodologies of English Adverting Slogans73. 1 Literal Translation Method73.2 Free Translation Method93.3. Adaptation Translation Method12.Conclusion15Bibliography17A Study on Translation of English Advertising Slogans.Introduction1.1Research BackgroundIn nowadays the economic is booming. The world is more and more integrated. The economics of different countries are getting more and more closely involved. In the wave of blooming economic, more and more companies try to get across the restrain of national border and explore a new oversea market. Advertisement is playing a more and more important role. Advertisement is not only a bridge of communication between different culture and countries but also an ambassador of businesses. With the development of this trend, businessmen lay more and more emphasis on advertisements since its really helpful in promoting their products. There are many types of advertisements and many ways of doing advertisements. Among which there is a very brief and striking type that is adverting slogan. Advertising slogans are always very simple and straight forward, easy to remember and recite. It has its own characters, features and unique methods to translate them.Generalization on English Advertising SlogansUsually advertising slogan refers to the non-personal communication of information about service or ideas, commodities or products through various media. As what Longman Dictionary of American English says, the word “advertisement” means “a notice of something for sale, job position to be occupied, room to rent, etc. as in a newspaper, on television, or posted on a wall” .The word “advertise” originates from the Latin word “advertere”,. The word means attracting peoples attention. 1The slogan is different from the other kinds of writing .The word slogan originates from a Gaelic phrase, slugh gairm. The phrase means battle cry in English.2 Slogan is designed to be easy to remember and repeat by people, to deeply impress its message on the customers. Sometimes, people find themselves make their market choices under the influence of these compelling words. Sometimes people pick up words or phrases from advertising slogans for use in conversation. So, the slogan has done a good job in fulfilling its duty of promoting the products and commodities.“Advertising slogans are claimed to be the most effective way to draw peoples attention to a certain kind of product. Its purpose is to emphasize a phrase that is specially designed for marketing a specific corporation image or a certain kind of product.” 3Advertising slogans are always short, phrases easy to remember are frequently used in advertising slogans. Obviously, in order to make the costumers remember and buy the businessman products, the advertising slogan should be easy to remember and recite. Characteristics of English Advertising SlogansAdvertising slogans must be impressive, attractive, persuasive and creative. Advertising language has its distinctive features in syntax, morphology and rhetorical devices. These features of English advertising will be briefly accounted from the structural, lexical and rhetorical perspective in this part of the thesis, 2.1 Structure The structure of advertising slogans is of serious importance. The aim of a advertising slogan is to catch the consumers interest and make them buy their products. So slogans that are brief and clear in structure are very effective. Those tediously long and insipid slogans would only make the costumers bored and annoyed. Therefore, we should take a close observation of the structure of advertising slogans. This thesis will take a look at simple sentences first. Simple sentences are sentences in whose structure only contains one single independent clause and no other dependent clauses. Simple sentences are quite commonly used in advertising slogans .Let me put an example :”Were serious about your safety. ”The slogan can be translated as “我们认真对待你的安全”. Simple as it is, it catches customers hearts because people care safety a lot and the slogan expresses the decree of the company in a simple, straightforward way to consumers. Also it can give the customers a feel of the sense of honest and responsibility of the company. The second to talk about is imperative sentences. In our daily life, we can see quite a variety types of slogans. There are quite many advertisement slogans using imperative sentence, Let me give you an instance: Lets make things better. 让我们做得更好。This is a good instance of using imperative sentence, it increases its persuasiveness and display the humble attitude of the company. 2.2 Lexical Feature First to talk about is adjective used in advertising slogans. The advertising slogans prefer words and expressions which are often used in daily communication. The main function of adjectives in advertising slogans is to describe and modify nouns. Among commonly used adjectives in advertising slogans, words such as good, new, great have the most frequent appearance and can be used to describe different kinds of commodities. Other adjectives are always used for particular advertising products .Here are some instances : crisp, fresh, delicious, rich for “food”; easy, safe and can be used for all types of machinery and appliances and kitchen products; extra, free, special are often used to attract some target clients. Let me put some examples here: lets make things better. The taste is great. Feel the new space.Next to study is name in advertising slogans. Noun, especially the name of a company or the brand of a product is always frequently repeated and emphasized in an advertisement. Names are always the most important information in an ad, cause they can impress the commodity to the customers and tell them what to buy. For example: “I chocolate you!” This is a piece of LGs mobile phone advertisement. The slogan “I chocolate you!” breaks the convention, the name of that type of mobile phone the noun “chocolate” is used as verb. This not only points out the imitable chocolate shell but also gives a strong impression in visual and hearing and cause consumers greatly interest and attention to this product. Next is verb used in advertising slogans. The famous linguist Leech Geoffrey listed 20 most frequently used English verbs in English advertisements in his work, they are: take, start, taste, buy, come, go, know, keep, look, need, love, use, feel, make, get, give, have, see, choose.3 Verbs can give a direct impression to the customers about how to use the product or what the product will make you feel. Some instances here: Once tasted, always loved. The language is plain to understand but it can make their customers mouth-watering, longing for the product. Last but not least, numerals used in the advertising slogans. Numerals are the basic mathematical concepts expressing the quantity of things. The numeral gives a credible, specific impression to the customers. “Feel the Diet Center Difference. Suzanne Morgan called Diet Center and took off 18 pounds and 24 inches in just 8 weeks. And shes kept it all for over a year!” This is an advertisement of a weight losing organization. It uses some detailed and specific numbers such as 18, 24 ,8 and a year. These numbers create a credible, specific empirical results and boost its persuasiveness. 2.3 Rhetoric Features in the Advertising SloganTrope is very commonly used in advertising. Trope is a kind of rhetorical figure of speech. It is usually a play on words. To use a trope is to describe a thing by describing another thing which has different nature but similarities. It can be divided into two categories that are simile and metaphor. Linguist Winfield Gongs defined simile as: “A simile is a likeness expressed”. It is often used together with like, as etc. A simile always uses familiar things to stimulate consumers imagination. So that the audiences can have a clear and vivid understanding and impression of the products . Instances: Feather water: light as a feather. This is an advertisement for a kind of glasses . This ad can be translated as:”法泽瓦特眼镜,轻如鸿毛”. People like light glass frame . The ad compares the glass frame to feather. The simile here can impress the audiences deeply. Metaphor is also called condensed simile. Due to the reason that metaphor can provide readers with infinite imagination space it is more commonly used in advertisements. Usually, metaphor is presented as xxx is yyy. Instances: Youre better off under the umbrella. This is an advertisement for an insurance company. Travelers are always concerned about their security. Therefore this advertisement compare umbrella to this insurance company in order to make the travelers feel they will be safe under the protection of the insurance and could be worry-free to enjoy the fun of travel. . Some times , in the advertisements, in order to give prominence to the theme ,touch hearts of readers ,win their clear and favorable impression of the products and enhance the influence and persuasion of the advertising works, people usually emphasize or highlight a certain thing or exaggerate the facts deliberately. This is the rhetoric device of hyperbole. This kind of speech rhetorical device is quite commonly used in advertisements. For example: An advertisement of one cosmetic: Coverage so invisible, its time to rewrite the history! Its purpose is to tell the consumers their cosmetics are of good quality and cant be discover it unnatural on the face. “It is time to rewrite the history!” is an exaggeration or hyperbole. This can help to strengthen the effect of the product and make the product more impressive. Personification is a very common rhetorical device used in advertisements. It gives things human feelings, actions, languages and so on. It can make the text more vivid and give the readers a deeper impression about the product. For example: LuDanLan CosmeticsLove me tender, love me true. This is a cosmetic advertisement. Cosmetics have no life but here personification gives them lives. Obviously this ad is easy to remember and vivid due to the use of personification here.Pun is a kind of rhetorical device that is also very popular in advertisements. In a sentence using pun, people may use only one thing to indicate two things or express two meanings. If it is used properly, pun can create special effect , such as humor and euphemism. It will also enable the advertiser to reach an astonishing, funny and h impressive and memorable effect on the customers. Just as the old saying goes : “ kill two birds with one stone”. “Money doesnt grow on trees. But it blossoms at our branches”. This is an advertising slogan for British Lloyds Bank. The word “branch” has two layers of meanings. One meaning is its literal meaning: branches of the tree while the other meaning is: the branches of the bank. The advertisement is telling the customers that if customers deposit their money in the British Lloyds Bank then the money will keep on growing. The pun makes this slogan impressive and meaningful.There are some other rhetoric features in the advertising slogan, such as alliteration, consonance, parallelism, parody, irony, and antithesis. They are also very important. But what have been discussed above are the most commonly used rhetorical devices in advertising slogans. Translation Methodologies of English Adverting SlogansI think we can use three methods to translate advertisement slogans: free translation, literal translation, adaption translation. 3. 1 Literal Translation MethodLiteral translation is defined by Feng Qinghua as “the translation method both maintains the content of the source text and the form of it. The source text should adopt same expression form to express same content, thus it can bring the similar effect”. Literal translation is word-for-word translation. Its advantage is that the translation in target language would take every aspect of the source language into consideration, including word form, sentence structure and language style. Literal translation is word for word. The target text by literal translation is not easy to read and smooth sometimes, but the information of advertisement can be expressed clearly. In order to achieve the effect of “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance”, we should avoid ambiguity of the meaning of the source language and inappropriateness of the sentence structure of the target language caused by grammar system differences or cultural differences in the target text. Generally speaking, literal translation is the simplest and the most commonly used means of translating the advertising slogans. It is also the most useful means to do advertising slogan translation. It is estimated that at least fifty percent of advertising slogans can be literally translated.Let me illustrate this translation methodology and its relationship with the characteristics of advertising slogans in detail. First , an instance of literal translation used to translate slogan using simple sentence : “A business in millions. A profit in pennies.” We can translate this ad as:“百万生意，毫厘利润。” Penny is quite a little amount of money. So obviously it adopts the rhetorical device of hyperbole. If we take the literal translation on method here, the translation would be clear and authentic to the original text. The Chinese translation using two phrases in four characteristics is easy to recite and read. The structure of the original text is remained. There is a sharp contrast between the content of the two sentences. The contrast of the amount of money is also very clear in its Chinese translation. This can give the customers a deep impression and reach the goal to promote this brand. In this instance there is also a question of culture difference. In western culture , penny means very little money, but we have to translate it as 毫厘，not 便士here. Here is another instance. “Take TOSHIBA， take the world.” This is an ad of the world famous brand Toshiba. We can take the literal translation method to translate it . This slogan can be translated as “拥有东芝，拥有世界。” Obviously it adopts hyperbole here. Using the method of literal translation we can maintain its original structure and meaning. The meaning and the expressiveness are accurately and fully maintained by its literal translation. The literal translation of the ad can maintain the effect of the rhetorical device. In this ad, the verb “拥有” appeared twice. Using the method of literal translation, we use the same Chinese characters to translate them. This can definitely remain the effect of alliteration in the original text. Its Chinese is simple, strait and expressive as the original text. This coherence also gives this slogan an accurate equivalence in Chinese which will give the brand a similar affection in both home and broad.The taste is great. This is an ad of a food company Nestle. The Chinese translation is “味道好极了” The literal translation here is clear, authentic ,and natural. It is also very accurate and attractive. The Chinese translation is just as brief , clear and to catch people. It is a perfect example to adopt the literal translation methodology here. We can see the Chinese slogan as an equivalence of it original version in every aspect. Nest is a brand of food. The translation tells the customers clearly that this product is delicious food. If the company would like to attract the customers attention, the best way is to tell the customers that their product is delicious. The original slogan focuses on this point and we adopt the literal translation method to maintain this point. This Chinese version of this slogan is very popular in China and this is a solid proof that proves the success of using literal translation method here.Here is another instance to illustrate this method. “M&Ms melt in your mouth, not in your hand.” M&M is a brand of chocolate candy. This ad can be translated as”只融在口，不融在手。”This is an ad using the rhetorical device of pun. The literal translation can completely convey the two layers of meaning of the ad, which is the chocolate is of good quality for it is not easy to melt and the chocolate is extremely delicious so you can not wait to stuff your mouth with this chocolate so the chocolate will not stay in your hand for a long time. If we try to use other way to translate this advertising slogan, the translation must be long and plain. But the literal translation here can express these meanings in a brief and interesting way.Generally speaking, literal translation is a very useful tool to cope with translating advertising slogan. Literal may be the first choice when translation slogans using hyperbole, trope and personification. If the slogans are in simple sentences, literal translation will be effective in most times. This is a method most commonly used and easy to operate by translators of all degrees. 3.2