（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）英语广告中的双关语及翻译.pdf

puns and their translation in english advertisements iv 摘 要 随着世界经济的迅速发展及国际间交往的日益频繁广告已经深入到社会生 活的每一个角落我国改革开放的深入和世贸组织的加入以及网络等信息通讯 技术的发展使国际广告的传播成为可能在这种情况下广告翻译的重要性也 日益凸现在过去的五年中广告翻译研究已得到了学者们足够的重视 广告商们为了吸引消费者的注意刺激其购买欲望最终促成购买行为在 广告创作中不惜运用各种修辞手段双关语就是英语广告中运用最多的修辞手段 之一双关是一种常用的修辞手法是利用一个词的不同意义或两个不同意义的 词的相同或相似发音来造成一箭双雕或声东击西的效果通常双关语作者所暗示 或强调的并非其表面意义而重点往往落在暗含的深层意义上它在英汉语中都 是运用最早的修辞格之一它在文学中的运用可上溯到两千年前双关语因其简 洁凝练风趣幽默新颖别致的特点被广泛用于文学新闻和广告中对双关语 的研究由来已久有很多学者对莎士比亚的作品和红楼梦中的双关语进行了 研究对广告中双关语的研究也有一些涉及 本文作者之所以选择广告中的双关这一似乎太过平常的话题原因有三一 是因为伴随着全球化及国际经济一体化广告将提升到一个新台阶随之广 告翻译也将得到前所未有的发展其重要性不言而喻二是因为对双关语的翻 译研究大多限于文学作品对广告中双关语的专门研究并不太多一些见诸报刊 杂志上的文章也只简略地探讨了一些翻译方法缺乏有针对性地理论作为指导 谈不上研究的广度和深度三是因为双关语的翻译一直被认为是翻译的难点 有些学者甚至认为双关语是不可译的本文作者认为尽管英汉两种语言中由于 词语的含义的不对等以及语言中词的音义结合的任意性语言间的差异很大双 关语在两种语言间的表现形式也不尽相同但广告语言所起的作用和功能是相似 的即宣传产品促进销售从这个意义上来说广告中双关语的翻译还是可能 的当然这需要广大学者和翻译家们的深入研究和共同努力 本论文的特点之一是引用了大量的例证用以说明双关语的运用及其在广告 中的翻译策略所引用的例证中并非所有英语广告在引用的资料中都有汉译 有些是本文作者的尝试真诚地希望本人的努力能对那些同样对双关语感兴趣的 人有所启示并希望与他们共同探讨广告中双关语的翻译问题 关键词关键词英语广告 双关 翻译 puns and their translation in english advertisements ii abstract with the development of the socialist market economy since chinas opening up to the outside world, advertising industry has been developing at a speed no one could imagine twenty years ago. the globalization of the world economy, chinas entry to wto and the fast development of the internet and the information communications technology, all these make it possible for english advertisements to exert their increasingly important influence on our daily life. thus, a study on the practice of translating english advertisements into chinese would be of great significance in the field of translation studies. however, the substantial discrepancies between english and chinese languages and cultures make advertising translation a difficult job. in order to attract consumers attention and promote the sales, advertisers adopt various kinds of figures of speech in advertising creation, of which pun is widely used. pun is a very common figure of speech, involving the use of a word with more than one meaning, or of words having the same, or nearly the same sound but different meanings. generally speaking, what the author of a pun implies or what he emphasizes is not the surface, literal meaning, but the deep, implied meaning. pun is also one of the earliest figures of speech used in both chinese and english, and its application in literary works can be dated as far back as two thousand years ago. the researches on puns have long been made, and there are a lot of researches on shakespeares works and a dream of red mansions. there are also some researches on puns in advertisements. though there have been some researches on advertising translation and puns, the author still selects puns and their translation in advertising as the research topic owing to the following three reasons. it is firstly because the importance of international advertising and advertising translation is strengthened by globalization and economic integration. secondly, many articles published on newspapers and magazines only simply discuss about the translation techniques and methods without correspondent theories as a guide. moreover, most of the researches on pun translation are limited to literary works, and few are involved in puns in advertising translation, let alone the research width and depth. thirdly, pun translation has been considered as the difficult point in translation research field, and many scholars even think that puns are untranslatable. the author holds that though there are great differences between english and chinese, the roles and the functions of the advertisements are similar, that is, the roles and the functions of all the advertisements are to advertise the products 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 iii and promote the sales. in this sense, the translation of puns in advertisements is possible. of course, it needs all scholars and translators to do further researches. one of the features of the dissertation is that it involves a lot of examples where the application of puns and their translation in english advertisements are discussed. the author hopes that her painful work will inspire those who are also interested in puns and their translation in advertisements, and she would discuss with them about the translation of puns in advertisements. key words: english advertisement pun translation 中南民族大学中南民族大学 学位论文原创性声明学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明所呈交的论文是本人在导师的指导下独立进行研究所取 得的研究成果除了文中特别加以标注引用的内容外本论文不包含任何其 他个人或集体已经发表或撰写的成果作品 对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个 人和集体均已在文中以明确方式标明本人完全意识到本声明的法律后果 由本人承担 作者签名 日期 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留使用学位论文的规定同意学 校保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版 允许论文被查 阅和借阅 本人授权中南民族大学可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内容编入 有关数据库进行检索可以采用影印缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编本 学位论文 本学位论文属于 1保密在_年解密后适用本授权书 2不保密 请在以上相应方框内打 作者签名 日期 年 月 日 导师签名 日期 年 月 日 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 1 1. introduction 1.1 the reasons of the study the existence and development of advertising has prompted a vast mass of researches, among which much attention has been paid to advertising language. that is quite understandable since the main and ultimate purpose of an advertisement is to persuade the audience to buy the product advertised. the advertiser will definitely put a lot of efforts into linguistic choices that play an important role in attracting the attention of the audience. as we can see, there is a tremendous amount of researches in advertising language, conducted by people in both the field of advertising and that of linguistics. however, punning in advertising, especially the translation of puns does not seem to receive enough attention it deserves. why puns in advertising and their translation are chosen as the objects of the present study based on the following reasons: firstly, punning is more pervasive in advertising discourse than what has been expected, whose study has never been more complete. and the translation of puns is discussed even less. how the puns in advertising are appropriately translated is worth making an attempt to have a thorough understanding. secondly, nidas functional equivalence theory, vermeers skopostheorie and newmarks communicative translation theory all have a guiding role in translating the puns in advertising. under the guidance of these three theories, the author thinks that we can choose different guiding principles when facing various kinds of advertisements. considering the length and the subject, only slogans and brand names are concerned and discussed in the dissertation. thirdly, the study of puns and their translation in advertising may be of practical importance in that china has kept more contact with western countries in all fields, especially in the economical field since china entered wto, and also that it is likely to provide guidelines for advertisers on how to employ advertising puns more forcefully and for translators on how to interpret them effectively. the last reason for choosing this subject stems from my personal interest. i enjoy puns as well as advertisements, especially puns. my interest in puns starts from the chinese poem zhuzhici(竹枝词) of the tang dynasty written by the tang poet liu yuxi(刘禹锡). the translation of puns has been thought of as the difficult subject by puns and their translation in english advertisements 2 many scholars at home and abroad. the author attempts to make more thorough study in this field. 1.2 literature review 1.2.1 tendencies in translation theories development advertising is as old as civilization and has long been used as means of communicating the need to buy and sell goods, even for the sales of slaves in ancient times (jefkins, 1985). but the translation practices were mainly literature translation and the theories are always dominated by the debate of which translation is better, literal translation or free translation. within this debate, however, even in ancient times, many translators still felt that the process of translating should involve both procedures: a faithful reproduction of formal source text qualities in one situation, and an adjustment to the target audience in another. since the 1960s, with the development of modern linguistics, translation studies have come to a new stage. new theories spring out and tend to be flexible. but the trend mentioned above has carried on into modern translation studies. among all the translation theories two main currents can be clearly seen. one is that translation theories break up with purely linguistic translation theory to be a theory combining linguistics (including semantics, syntax and pragmatics), sociology and intercultural communication. translation is now widely regarded as “cross-cultural event”. (snell-hornby, 1988) another current is that the target text reader has been assigned an important role. nidas dynamic equivalence theory emphasizes that the effect the target text creates on the target text reader is similar to that of the source text on the source text reader. and he starts to use the receptor text and receptor to replace target text and target text reader. relevance theory also places its emphasis on the target audience. in gutts view, translation is to provide optimal relevance to the target text reader (gutt, 1991) the action-oriented and the culture-oriented functionalist approaches, with vermeers skopostheorie as a typical model, go one step further. in the framework of his theory, one of the most important factors determining the purpose of a translation is the addressee, who is the intended receiver or audience of the target text with his culture-specific world knowledge, his expectations and his communicative needs. every translation is directed at an intended audience, since translating means “to produce a text in a target setting for a targeted purpose and target addressees in target circumstances”. (vermeer, 1989: 29) 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 3 in addition to the two main currents, with the social and cultural development, more and more distinct text types spring out, and thus linguists also distinguish different translation typology in translation practice. many theories distinguish two main situations. one is that the source text producer intends to communicate directly with the target text reader, but asks a translator to help because of lack of language or cultural knowledge of the target text. another is that the source text producer does not or may not intend to communicate directly to the target text reader, but to a translator, both a receiver of the source text and communicator of the target text. this distinction of first and secondary communication leads to different types of translation description: covert vs. overt translation, descriptive use vs. interpretive resemblance, and documentary vs. instrumental translation. this also arouses debate on whether the first situation belongs to translation studies or not. however, obviously, advertising translation belongs to the first situation. 1.2.2 domestic studies on translation since the transition from a planned economy to a market economy has just been going in china for about 20 years, overseas advertising of consumer products and services appears as a new text type. though chinese translators and advertising professionals never debate whether translation shall be called translation or adaptation, new studies in advertising translation have been done. in the articles about advertising translation, most of them, we found, are about translation strategy applications. the scholars advise one or two translation strategies to the audience and use many examples to prove their suggestions. for example, zhong lijun (2004) advised literal translation and free translation as the translation strategies for advertising translation and guo jianzhong (1998) proposed domestication and foreignization strategies, liu weidong (2001) domestication strategy and chen long (1997) communicative and semantic translation strategies. most of them are trying to address how to translate advertisements, while none of them attempts to answer why to choose these strategies rather than others. so far, few scholars have found a theory guiding advertising translation. some experts express the view that in translating publicity language, translators should distinguish different target audiences and consider the cultural and ideological differences between different audiences, and go away from total fidelity to the original texts when addressing overseas audiences. (chen long play on words”. in the oxford english dictionary, pun is defined as “the use of word in such a way as to suggest two or more meanings or different associations, or the use of two or more words of the same or nearly the same sound with different meanings, so as to produce a humorous effect”. as xu zhongbing徐仲炳states in the varieties and translation of english puns , puns can be roughly divided into two parts. they are named paronomasia(谐音 双关) and antalaclasis (同词异义双关). paronomasia is the use of two words, which are similar in pronunciation but different in meaning. for example, an advertisement goes: “catch the raincheetahs and cheat the rain.” “raincheetahs” is the brand name of the product. it is pronounced similarly to “raincheater” which echoes to “cheat the rain”. as for “antalaclasis”, it refers to a word used twice or more, but each time with a different meaning. “to english will i steal and there ill steal.”(shakespeare: henry v.). the first “steal” means “to go to england secretly without being noticed”. the second “steal” is used in its most commonly used meaning. in english rhetoric, professor wen jun offers five categories of punning as follows(李鑫华2000): a. homophonic puntwo expressions pronounced the same way b. paronomasiatwo expressions pronounced nearly the same way c. antalaclasistwo expressions pronounced and spelt the same way but different in meaning d. sylletic punone expression which has more than one meanings e. asteismuspun based on ambiguity of the same expression this classification, though very detailed, is thought to be over elaborate, so professor li xinhua puts these five categories into two: paronomasia and antalaclasis. and professor feng cuihua 冯翠华, in her english rhetorical options, also classifies puns into two broad types: 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 15 paronomasia uses words having the same sound or almost the same sound, but different in form and meaning. antalaclasis involves words or word phrases having the same sound and forms, but with two or more distinct meanings. the author prefers to follow li xinhua and fong cuihua, that is, to put puns into two broad categories: paronomasia and antalaclasis. the following is the study of each category with some examples. before getting to the detailed study of each category, the author will have to explain some terms which are frequently used in the following study. they are homonym, homophone and paronym. a homonym is one of the two or more words which have the same sound and often the same spelling but differ in meaning, and it is often used in antalaclasis. a homophone is one of the two or more words, such as “night” and “knight”, that are pronounced the same but differ in meaning, origin and sometimes in spelling. it is usually involved in paronomasia. a paronym is one of the two or more words which are pronounced or spelt nearly the same but differ in meaning and origin. and this form also appears in paronomasia. 3.1.1 paronomasia paranomasia uses two expressions that are pronounced the same way, or nearly the same way, but different in spelling, meaning and origin. this involves the use of homophones and paronyms. as is known, paronyms are two expressions which are only slightly different in surface forms. in the examples below, this difference mostly involves one or two letters. the formal similarity is weaker than homonyms, but still strong enough for two expressions to be related to each other in the mind of the listeners or readers. the following example, which involves the use of paronyms, is a story about three elderly gentlemen traveling by train in england. as the train slowed for a stop, the first man asked, “is this wembley?” “no.” said the second, “its thursday.” “so am i.” said the third man, “lets stop for a beer.” the story is so funny that it cant keep people reading it from laughing. we know that older people do not hear words clearly, so the misunderstandings of both “wembley” for “wednesday” and “thursday” for “thirsty” make a nice setting for the punch line delivered by the third man “lets stop for a beer.” there is another example: drunk drivers often put the quart before the hearse. puns and their translation in english advertisements 16 “put the quart before the hearse” is based on the idiom “put the cart before the horse”. here it involves two paronyms“quart” for “cart” and “hearse” for “horse”. this advertisement warns the drivers of the dangers brought about by drunken driving. and the following are some examples in which homophones are used to form puns. make your every hello a real good-buy. this is a pun used in a telephone advertisement. in english, “good-buy” is pronounced the same as “good-bye”, that is, they are homophones. when people make a call, they usually begin with a “hello” and end with a “good-bye”. if every call is smooth from the “hello” and “good-bye”, this telephone is a real “good-buy”. on sunday they pray for you and on monday they prey on you. in this sentence, “pray” and “prey” are pronounced the same. “pray” means “to speak to god, often silently, to show love, give thanks, or ask for something”, but “prey” means quite differently“to live by getting money from someone who is weak, helpless, by influence, or deceit”. the pun here lays bare the bou