Abstract

The thesis aims to explore the translation of English Advertisements in three respects: literal translation, free translation, and the combination of different translation methods, from the rhetorical perspective, with an attempt to enhance people’s understanding of English advertisements and improve the quality of the translation of English advertisements.  

The rhetorical feature is one of the prominent characteristics of English advertisements. Owing to the commonness between English and Chinese, and the intercultural communication, some English advertisements can be literally translated into Chinese without the loss of meaning and function, and even without the loss of rhetorical devices. However, differences always exist among languages and cultures. So while translating English advertisements, the translator should not only understand the characteristics of English advertisements, but also pay attention to the differences between languages and cultures. The differences may make the literal translation weak or even meaningless to the target reader. In this case, free translation and the combination of different translation methods should be employed in order to achieve the same advertising function as the original advertisement.

Key words: rhetoric; English advertisements; translation

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1 Introduction-1

1.1 Background of the study-1

1.2 Objective and methods of the study-1

1.3 Overall structure of the thesis-2

2 Literature Review-2

3 Rhetorical Features of English Advertisements-3

3.1 A brief introduction to rhetoric-3

3.1.1 Concept of rhetoric-4

3.1.2 Categories of modern rhetoric-4

3.2 Rhetorical characteristics of english advertisements-5

3.2.1 Simile and metaphor-5

3.2.2 Repetition and parallelism-6

3.2.3 Alliteration and rhyme-6

3.2.4 Pun-7

3.3 Summary-8

4 Translation of English Advertisements from the Rhetorical Perspective-8

4.1 Literal translation-9

4.2 Free translation-11

4.3 Combination of different methods-12

5 Conclusion-13

References-15