论广告语的翻译的原则

1、7. Classification of AdvertisingThe word advertising is often preceded by an adjective that indicates the kind of advertising being discussed. Advertising can be classified by four main criteria: target audience, geographic area, medium, and purpose. These classifications are showed as follows(Tanak

2、a, K., 1994):By Target audienceConsumer AdvertisingBusiness AdvertisingProfessional AdvertisingTrade AdvertisingAgricultural AdvertisingBy Geographic AreasInternational AdvertisingNational AdvertisingRegional AdvertisingLocal AdvertisingBy MediumPrint AdvertisingNewspaperMagazineBroadcast Advertisin

3、gTelevisionRadioOut-of- home AdvertisingOutdoor (billboard)TransitDirect-mail AdvertisingBy PurposeProduct AdvertisingNon-product AdvertisingCommercial AdvertisingNon-commercial AdvertisingAction AdvertisingAwareness AdvertisingAdvertising takes many forms, but in most of them language is of crucial

4、 importance. It is the primary vehicle for presenting messages to consumers; it is one of the tools advertisers use to attract the target audiences attention; it is crucial to the reasoning process by means of which consumers come to yield to advertisers messages; and it plays an important role in f

5、acilitating the consumers memory of the desirability of the product or service being promoted. Here, the thesis will restrict its discussion to the English language.Language is used by people to convey information, to communicate ideas and, in a word, to carry out social communication. This verbal c

6、ommunication is achieved in given situations, in particular ways, with certain people and for some specific purposes. Different communicative situations, ways, target audiences and purposes call for different choices of diction and expressions of language. This leads to different varieties of langua

7、ge. The variety motivated by a certain function is called style. English for advertising, thus, falls into this category.2. Overall Features of English for AdvertisingAdvertising language belongs to loaded language, which has strong persuasive power (Geis, Michael L., 1982). Its primary aim is to at

8、tract our attention and dispose us favorably towards the product or service on sale. Advertisers use language quite distinctively: there are certainly advantages in making bizarre and controversial statements in unusual ways as well as communicating with people using simple, straightforward language

9、. According to G .Leech (1996), in order to serve the functions of advertising, the language must have attention value, memory value, readability and selling power. To be more precise, it is attractive, interesting, memorable and persuasive.3. The Principle of AIMA (Attention, Interest, Memory, Acti

10、on)As is known, most advertising language belongs to loaded language which aims to change the target audiences will, opinions, or attitudes (whether in the interests of the audience or not is a separate matter). Advertising differs from other types of loaded language (such as political journalism an

11、d religious oratory) in having a very precise material goal. Changing the mental disposition of the audience is only important in so far as it leads to the desired kind of behavior）buying a particular kind of product. And in normal competitive conditions this means buying brand A rather than equival

12、ent brands B,.C, or D. The goal could scarcely be more specific.The most straightforward kind of advertisement is one which describes what special need the product fulfils, or what special advantage it offers. The trouble with this approach in a competitive market is that it tends to lead to a vicio

13、us circle of innovation, in which inordinate claims are made for the sake of news value. Each advertiser tries to steal a march over his competitors by publicizing the most trivial change in his product as a vast improvement. In addition, for many products it is often difficult to think of any mater

14、ial quality which could be given as a reason for preferring one brand to another. Consequently, in recent years an alternative brand-image (Myers, Greg, 1994) approach, which aims to establish a stable market over a long period, has grown in importance. It is often more practicable to represent a pr

15、oduct in a way which will identify it with popular desires than to persuade the public into liking it. Therefore, the selectional restrictions during the formation of the style-English for advertising-can be directly related to one of the four principles, namely, principle of attention, interest, me

16、mory and action. They can be considered under the respective headings of attention value, readability (or listenability), memorability and selling power.4. Attention ValueWhatever medium is used, advertising usually competes at a great disadvantage with other claims on the publics attention. The mea

17、ns of overcoming this disadvantage belongs more often to itself other means of communication or to the transmission of language than to illustration, display, typography, vocal emphasis, and so on (Fan, 1981).But one way of provoking the consumers attention and curiosity is to present him with somet

18、hing surprising and unexpected, and this can be done as well by the unorthodox use of language as by other means. Any kind of unconventional behavior, linguistic or otherwise, compels notice. The copywriter who exploits this fact can be compared to a legendary customer in a crowded restaurant, who s

19、tood on his head to attract the waiters attention.Departing from the conventions or rules of language can take many forms. In its grossest form, it is a violation of some obvious rule of the language: perhaps a wrong spelling, or a grammatical solecism. Because this type of unorthodoxy usually carri

20、es penalties of misunderstanding or disapproval, it is the least important variety of unconventionality. Neologism (inventing new words) is another type which requires tactful handling. But there is considerable scope for inventiveness in the two areas of semantics and context. Semantic unorthodoxy

21、can be crudely characterized as playing with the meanings of words (Leech, Geoffrey N. 1981), and is the basis of many linguistic jokes and some important literary devices such as metaphor and paradox. Contextual unorthodoxy consists in exploiting the incongruity of language in an appropriate situat

22、ion.5. Readability How to ensure that attractiveness continues after the bait has been taken? On a psychological plane, this might mean how to keep up suspense, interest, or amusement(Zhao, 1992). On a linguistic plane, it is more a question of how to make the message easy to grasp and assimilate. S

23、ome efforts have been made to assess objectively the readability of written language, by measuring the simplicity of its structure in combination with other factors, or by finding out how easy it is to predict individual words from their environments. The latter measure conflicts with attention valu

24、e and interest value, which place a premium on the unexpected and enigmatic, as opposed to the predictable. But the conflict does not arise if, as often happens in the press advertising, the surprise element is concentrated on the headline.Readability has, unfortunately, no ready terminological equi

25、valent for spoken language. However, the properties which make language easy to read are basically the same as those which make it easy to listen to. The basic requirements are a simple, personal, and colloquial style, and a familiar vocabulary.MemorabilityAdvertising has to make a lasting impressio

26、n if it is to affect buying. But a conscious and detailed memory of an individual advertisement is usually too high an objective to aim at. It is more through being repeatedly subjected to a particular advertisement, or to an advertising campaign, or to an advertising program extending over a long p

27、eriod, that a consumer becomes and stays familiar with the product, and the virtues which are claimed for it.Memorability of language can be more or less equated with memorisability. Verbatim recall is the very highest goal to which a copywriter could aspire, and in general it is obviously beyond wh

28、at he requires or can achieve. Yet an advertisement gains nothing unless the name of the product is remembered, so at least in this respect, it is desirable that part of the linguistic message should be memorized. In fact the role of the verbal memory extends beyond the brand-name, to the memorizing

29、 of slogans, key phrases, snatches of songs, etc. By dint of repetition, whether in a single commercial or in a whole advertising campaign, the consumer may be brought to the point where the brand-name and some catch-phrase associated with it are mutual recall stimuli, so that the product is, so to

30、speak, stored in his mind with a permanently attached label. Repetition obviously plays an essential role in memorization. The amount of repetition of both spoken and printed advertising is phenomenal, and has a bearing on certain peculiarities of advertising syntax. One apparent drawback is that it

31、 may tend to bore or infuriate the consumer, depending on his temperament. But the advertising world is unconcerned about this: it has yet to be shown that hostility of some consumers to the advertising significantly affects the disposition of others to buy the product.It is a general principle that

32、 if a piece of language is repeated often enough, it will stick. But a more interesting question is What makes one piece of language intrinsically more memorable than another? To some extent, the ease with which we remember something depends on the impact it first made on us; in this respect, the go

33、al of memorability coincides with that of attention value. But there are other aids to memory, such as the phonological regularities of alliteration, metrical rhythm, and rhyme. These are features which make verse easier to memorise than prose, and which make the jingle perhaps the most powerful mne

34、monic device in advertising. (Cook, Guy., 1985)7. Selling PowerHere we reach the crucial and most mysterious part of the advertising process. Whether a copy sells or not is its criterion of success; yet there is no satisfactory way of finding out what general linguistic features, if any, contribute

35、to this objective. To take an obvious example, one of the most striking features of the grammar of advertising is an extreme frequency of imperative clauses. The consumer is for ever being told to get this, buy that, taste the other. But there is no evidence that these direct exhortations, however i

36、mportunate get results. It is within human experience that telling someone to do something is less successful than politely asking him to do it, or even asking him to do it.One can plausibly deny that there is any general connection between language and selling power. In fact it is not easy to gener

37、alize about any properties of advertisements that sell. Success depends on many known and unknown variables, to the least of which is the unanalyzable creative skill of choosing and implementing the right kind of selling approach for the right kind of situation. The kernel of the sales message the v

38、ital promise or unique selling proposition,-has to be in some way special and different for each product. It would seem vain to look for uniformity in an area where uniqueness is held in honor (Dune,S.Watson and Arnold M.Barban. 1974). To take this negative position too seriously, however, would be

39、to resign from the most challenging part of relating language to situation. The three principles of attention value, readability, and memorability explain by no means all the standard features of advertising language. It seems reasonable that others should be explained as those which have been found

40、 by experience or instinct to have virtue in selling. The alternative would be to consider them valueless conventions which somehow, through habit or tradition, have become part of the copywriters stock-in-trade. We cannot ultimately prove their usefulness, nor should we ignore the element of conser

41、vatism in copywriting practice. But when forms of language seem to have a clear motivation in terms of selling tactics, there is no harm in pointing it out.Moreover, a novel or unique claim on behalf of a product does not have to be expressed in novel language. It is no paradox that some of the commonest advertising clichs put emphasis on the uni