中英文广告用语的区别.doc

Chen11 西南大学育才学院本科毕业论文 An Analysis on Advertising Language Between English and Chinese学 院 外国语学院 专 业 英语 年 级 2007级 学 号 2007108004 姓 名 陈 港 指导教师 徐 红 成 绩 二一一年五月OutlineThesis: Advertising language between English and Chinese has many similarities and differences with a very important position and role in the sales of business.I. IntroductionA. The role of advertising language in modern businessB. The features of a successful advertisementII. Similarities of advertising language between English and Chinese A. Similarities in diction B. Similarities in rhetoric devices C. Similarities in syntax D. Similarities in tonalityIII. Differences of advertising language between English and Chinese A. Linguistic differences B. Cultural differencesIV. The realization of localization A. Definition of localization B. Importance of localization C. Realization of localization of advertising language V. ConclusionAbstractAdvertising takes many forms, in most of which, however, language is of crucial importance，as an important means to enhance advertising expression, it has a very important position and role. To sell commodities or increase sales is the ultimate goal of advertising. People live in a world of advertising and advertisement has become an important and inseparable part of peoples daily life. People have a good impression from a wonderful advertisement, and that also contributes a lot to increase in sales of business. This paper aims at dealing with advertising language between English and Chinese. This paper tends to discuss this in three parts. The first part introduces similarities of advertising language between English and Chinese in terms of diction, rhetoric, syntax, and tonality. The second part mainly makes an analysis of cultural differences between advertising language in English and in Chinese. The third part deals with the issue of localization in translation of advertising language between English and Chinese.An Analysis on Advertising Language Between English and ChineseAdvertisement, as the outcome of development in productivity, plays a vital role in modern production and consumption. It has become a basic condition of commodity economy. It is an efficient way and powerful tool to publicize business information. The main purpose of an advertisement is to catch peoples attention by means of a short message and persuade or entice them to purchase their products. To produce wonderful advertisements and enhance advertising expression, it is natural to resort to advertising languages. Advertising languages is the essence of advertisement because of its key factor to make consumers show interest, draw attention, arouse desire, and take action eventually.In addition, with the development of the globalization and the international trade, foreign exchange between advertisements is more frequent. Foreign advertisements, some differences from the general domestic advertising, are commercial advertisements crossing borders, which represents not only products quality and reputation, but also a national cultural quality and value orientation. Therefore, we must stand in a strategic height to treat languages when launching advertisings; it is realistic significance for producing excellent advertisements .What kind of advertisement is successful? And what features a successful advertisement should possess? American Marketing Managers Handbook points out that an advertisement should have four functions: AIDA, which represent four wordsAttention, Interest, Desire, Action. (1). Attentiona good advertisement should attract the consumer to direct their attention to the product of it.(2). Interestthe introduction and publicity of an advertisement should arouse consumers great interest.(3). Desirethe publicity of advertising should stimulate consumers desire to buy the product, and make them realize that this product is just what they want.(4). Actionthe advertising makes consumer to response to the advertising information and evoke them to take the action of purchasing.There are similarities and differences in many areas of advertising languages，so linguistic study is actually a kind of scientific comparative analysis of the world language integrated. Through the contrastive analysis and research, we can not only further understand the characteristics of native language but understand more about foreign language.Whatever language the advertisement employs, they share the same objective, that is to persuade consumers to buy the products advertised with the purpose of stimulating demand and increasing sales of business. There is an inevitable connection between advertising language and its corresponding function. Similarities of advertising language between English and Chinese are discussed in four terms as follows.Advertising language pursues novelty in diction and grammar, that will catch the peoples attention and interesting then reach the goal of communication. The function of advertising is to provide and disseminate information, attract consumer, exploit market, and promise the quality. Therefore, advertisers must pay attention to its impelling language, and the first step is to use popular and oral language and make it understood and memorized easily. Advertisers likes to adopt those “little” words, the general and popular words, avoiding using the “big” words, usually simple and informal, abstract words or too specialized terminology. Concise although some words are, they can deepen impression.Generally speaking, advertising message is concise and easy and readable. Simple words, in particular, multi-purpose simple sentences ，monosyllabic words make customers easy to take clear notice of the terms of advertisement. In terms of language form, the generalization principle, that is, “keep it short and sweet”, especially in advertising slogans, it is perfect choice that instant advertisements make readers cognition limited by the time, which calls for simple but wonderful language. For example : 1.Tides is in; Dirt is out(Tides) 2. Keep moving ( Anta).Advertisements function determines the role of words used. The products are always described as the best. Commendatory terms and complimentary expressions are nothing new in advertisements. There will never be misers when using these words and expression. Meanwhile they take pains to avoid words harming to establish interactive relations with consumers. They also advocate positive attitudes towards life, encouraging people to do significant things. It can be comprehended that this will help to set up a fine image of products in public. Once people accept what is mentioned in advertisement, the goal is reached. Commodity is really a wonderful and colorful world. How to represent the world through words in front of consumers without reducing elegant demeanour is a problem. Rhetoric acts as the problem solver. The rhetorical applications can enrich language expression to strengthen language expression effect. For this reason, some common rhetoric devices as follows are widely used to make close to readers or audiences. Metaphor is discussed in the first place. It is a most common rhetoric used in advertisements. Metaphor can make depicted objects vivid. Appropriate metaphor can also stand out products features or characteristics so that products can be accepted easily. Making use of relationship between ontology and vehicle shows the characteristics of the product, rendering language vivid, the result of which is peoples interest is aroused. An example is put forward to prove it “The battle plane？A mobile phone actually” (Bird cell phone). The metaphor is full of originality so that the watchers are surprised to the unique advertising, therefore, it is kept in mind unconsciously.Besides, personification is a figure of speech in which inanimate objects and abstractions are endowed with human qualities or are represented as possessing human form. The use of personification in advertising endows the product with human emotion, and makes them amicable to consumers. Herein an English advertisement is taken for example: we are proud of the birthplaces of our children, the grapes of Almaden. On our classic various wines, you will find the birthplaces of our children (Almaden Wine). How endearing the advertising is, so you can imagine the effect. Another example “the most thoughtful Nikon of all time. No one cares more about your image than Nikon”. In the latter advertisement, the Nikon camera without life is personated into a thoughtful man. This expression leaves the image that Nikon is considerate and careful to people.Thirdly, pun is a play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words. Herein is an example, “Ask for More” (More cigarettes). It properly takes advantage of homonym and thesaurus to make some words possess double meaning in specific environment. Pun is widely used, and is one of the most effective means of rhetoric that can receive unexpected humorous effect on advertisement. The following examples are to justify it: 1. Obey your thirst(Sprite). 2. From Sharp minds, come sharp products (Sharp).This kind of pun builds a relaxed atmosphere of humor; the product can be accepted by consumers naturally. Repetition in advertisement in English and in Chinese refers to advertisement doubling and even tripling certain words. The effect is to stand out information of products, or to deepen the impression of products in consumers brain. The effect is obviously seen from the following examples, “Mosquito bye bye bye(RADAR). This expression demonstrates the brand is extraordinary by repeating the letter “bye”. Hi-Fi, Hi-Fun, Hi-Fashion, only from Sony” “Hi-” tells people that the performance of Sony is excellent. Hyperbole is the deliberate use of overstatement or exaggeration to achieve emphasis. That is to say this technique exaggerates fact a lot, but exaggerating facts is to stress facts. In advertising, it is not enough to say a thing is simply “good” rather, it shall be perfect, colossal, spectacular, superb, gorgeous, fantastic, and the like. “Big” becomes large, giant. Some examples are to support the idea: 1. The first ever， the last youll ever need (SEIKO WATCH). 2. Good to the last drop (MaxwellHousecoffee).Some expressions are sure to overstate quality of products, but the effect absolutely is satisfactory. The process of reading advertising actually is the process of storage of information, which involves with instant memory. Instant memory is determined by the length of information content. In other words if the sentence is shorter, it is remembered more quickly. Advertising language is required to be understandable and easy to memorize. In this way, the desire to buy will be aroused. The advertising writers do not use flowery language, but unadorned spoken language. Advertising time and expense is limited, which also requires short advertising sentences. For example: 1. Just do it (Nike); 2. Focus on life(Olympus). These advertisings are so simple, but that does not affect the effect at all. Imperative sentence appears in both Chinese advertisements and English advertisements. The purpose of advertising is to persuade and direct people to accept the certain standpoint or to take measures to purchase. Imperative sentences just have this function. So, the frequent use of imperative sentence strengthens advertising effect. According to the statistics by linguists, a quarter or more sentences are imperative. Advertising designers reasonably employ a lot in advertisements. For example: 1. Lets make things better(Philips). 2.Take time to indulge（Nestle Icecream）. Interrogation is to ask a question not for the sake of getting consumers answers, but to put a point more clearly. Interrogative sentences can vary from multiple choice test questions to rhetorical ones. It is also common to give a suggested answer to the question, standing out the advertised product even more. But more often there are no answers to the interrogations at all. Both Chinese advertisements and English advertisements employ the device of interrogation for the sake of emphasis. One example as follow: Wheres the Wally with the mobile phone? - Nokia, the easiest way to find Wally . Advertising language between English and Chinese always are recherch in rhythm, pursuing rhyme to deepen listeners impression on the advertisement. Words are relatively fixed and short; it is in accordance with the principle of boosting memory. This language is catchy, and gives readers beautiful enjoyment. People will obtain the profound impression, which naturally shorten the distance between businessmen and consumers. As follows are the convincing examples.1. A special cola，a special choice ( Coca Cola). 2 .Good teeth, good health (Colgate).Advertising language between English and Chinese have something in common, but they belong to two language systems respectively, therefore they are certainly different in some aspects owe to language itself, social background and cultural deposits. The differences are specialized as follows.According to the grammatical structure of the two languages, Chinese is an isolating language and English is an inflectional language. Being lacking in variation of vocabulary is the formers feature; it is strict in lexical order. Compared with isolating language, inflectional words are priggish in vocabulary. The difference is reflected in their advertising language, too.Advertising language in English is variable. It can create some new words by adding prefix or suffixes. Although the form of new words is different from the previous, the meaning is nearly the same. This characteristic catches peoples eyes so that they are willing to have one more look. Telling people the things are of high quality and purity, which inspires people the most colorful imagination. In addition, some prefixes or suffixes like “super-”, “ex-”, “-er”, “-est” etc, are often used to stress the high quality of the product. But we seldom can see this phenomenon in Chinese advertising; the main point is displayed in phrasal partial tone. To Chinese people, they advocate peace of life psychologically. What they hope to see is everything is in order; “patient, moral, conservative and pragmatic” are their basic principles. That forges the unique character of Chinese. For this, Chinese advertising language is well-behaved, unlike the English advertising language, which is open and brave in wording. It is particular true when it comes to the issue of sex. Chinese advertising is filled with misgivings and fear when using relevant words; however, English advertising is fearless and frank. Besides, Chinese people have peasantry ideology in the innermost because of the long feudality, therefore they like practical or substantial benefit. Another different point is about humor in language. Humor technique is less relatively in Chinese advertising on account of advertisers knowledge and experience. Language is closely related to culture. Language expresses and embodies cultural reality. On the other hand, language, which is culture-bound, helps perpetuate the culture. To some extent the changes in language reflect the changes in culture in return. Individualism is the opposite of collectivism; together they form on of the dimensions of national cultures. Individualism stands for a society in which the ties between individuals are loose: Everyone is expected to look after himself or herself and his or her immediate family only. Collectivism stands for a society in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong cohesive in-groups, which throughout peoples lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty. In the continuing struggle between “individualism” and “collectivism”, Chinese will always find himself in the company of the former. “Do what you want” was advertising made by an American brand cigarettes. It promotes sales immensely in America at once time, therefore, advertisers copy it to Hong Kongs marketing. To their surprise, the brand encounters a big setback. In America, people stress liberty and individualism. Nevertheless, Hong Kong, a place where the mainstream is Chinese traditional culture, does not approve of the idea that “do what you want”. They believe that our thinking is the individual idealistic expression and an ignorance of others ideas and concepts. The advertising concerns Hong Kongs consumers, who fear the advertising has a bad impact on the younger generation. The result is obvious; products of this brand are completely unsalable. Reposing to marketing pressure, advertisers replace the adverting into “Do what you should”. China runs a long course from a remote period, thus history, customs and traditions are its extremely valuable treasure and common spiritual wealth. They play an important guiding role in Chinese behaviors. Whats more, Chinese uphold the proverb: The bronze mirror may help to view