Abstract

The rapid development of advertising business reveals the importance and diversity of advertising language. Clearly advertisements are meant to convey product message and even sincerity to consumers. The quality of advertising language decides whether it can catch the attention of its audience and thus promotes the product or service. It requires words in an advertisement to be concise and vivid enough. Therefore, rhetorical devices are often employed to achieve greater advertising effects. The problem of translating these rhetorical devices follows and needs to be solved. This paper mainly discusses metaphor translation in the English advertisements.

First, the reason why rhetorical devices are frequently used in advertisements are discussed in detail. What effects can be achieved is vital to the translation of these devices. Efforts need to be made to maintain not only aesthetic effects but also expressive force in advertisement translation.

The present paper takes Nida’s functional equivalence theory as a theoretical basis. Nida’s theory asks for equivalence of both form and content. Besides, it calls for naturalness, accuracy and conciseness. It is of great help to the following discussion of metaphor translation.

This paper chooses English advertisements among the most popular ones to observe their expressive effects and translation. The study finds that all translated texts of English advertisements are required to be concise enough and closely related with the products or service. Finally, this paper puts forward three translation strategies: metaphor to metaphor (reproduction of the same image and replacement of the image), metaphor to simile, and metaphor to non-rhetorical versions.

Key words: English advertisements, metaphor, translation, functional equivalence

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

Chapter One Introduction-1

1.1 Significance of the Study-1

1.2 Objective of the Research-1

Chapter Two Literature Review-3

2.1 Research on Figures of Speech in English Advertising-3

2.1.1 Effects figures of speech in advertisements achieve-3

2.1.2 Translation of figures of speech in English advertisements-4

2.1.3 Summary-5

2.2 Previous Study on Metaphor-5

2.2.1 Metaphor comprehension of Chinese English learners-5

2.2.2 Translation strategies of metaphor-6

2.2.3 Summary-7

Chapter Three Theoretical Framework-8

3.1 A Brief Introduction to Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory-8

3.1.1 Development of Nida’s translation theory-8

3.1.2 Definition of functional equivalence-9

3.2 Feasibility of Applying Functional Equivalence to Ad. Translation-10

Chapter Four Application of Functional Equivalence in Ad. Translation-11

4.1 Stylistic Requirements for Functional Equivalence-11

4.1.1 Being natural-11

4.1.2 Being accurate-13

4.1.3 Being concise-14

4.2 Strategies of Metaphor Translation in English Advertisements-16

4.2.1 Metaphor to metaphor-16

4.2.1.1 Reproduction of the same image in the target language-16

4.2.1.2 Replacement of the image in the source language-17

4.2.2 Metaphor to simile-18

4.2.3 Metaphor to non-rhetorical versions-20

Chapter Five Conclusion-22

5.1 Major findings and implications-22

5.2 Suggestions for further study-23

References-24

文献综述报告-26