开题报告:
Research Proposal
Ⅰ Title of My Thesis:
Puns in English Advertisements and their Translation
英语广告双关语及其翻译
Ⅱ Significance of Study
Advertisement is an important part of our economy and culture that exerts significant impact on all walks of life. With more attention attracted by international business, most companies would like to reinforce their marketing power by investment of large quantities on advertising in the target country or area. Accordingly, the problem how the classic original version of advertisement could win the hearts of consumers in another country becomes a new studying focus in translation fields. Besides, a great amount of rhetorical skills and devices used in English ads can improve the aesthetic results and persuasive effect of ads, and then puns are more and more largely used in English advertisements.
I choose this thesis as my title, because I realize that there is great significance of this study. Firstly, advertisement is a kind of brief and clear art. Studying English ads not only helps us to develop our creation, but also cultivate our thinking and abilities of appreciating and innovating ads. On the other hand, I hope that by this chance, I can get more knowledge of the colorful essence of English, and I can enhance my comprehensive and applying abilities of oral English, and I can widen my English thinking, and I can get a relatively full knowledge of English culture, and I can train my abilities of flexible translation.
Secondly, using puns appropriately in advertisements can enhance advertisements’ charm, bring about consumers’ imagination and consolidate their memories. Punning is a kind of play on words, which refers to a rhetoric device composed by the similarity in pronunciation and divergence in meaning, so as to produce a humorous effect. Pun is more persuasive in advertising than what has been expected, but it has never been more complete. How it is adopted in advertising to facilitate the linguistic communication and ultimately serve to reach the intended purposes, and cognitively cast influences upon the advertiser’s expression and the audience’s interpretation of the utterances in discourse is still a wonder which is worth making an attempt to have a thorough understanding. 1
Thirdly, the study of punning in advertising may be of practical importance in that it is likely to provide guidelines for advertisers on how to employ advertising puns more forcefully. It leads us to achieve a better understanding of puns in advertising and thus enjoy them.
In conclusion, rhetoric, especially punning, is an art of language, and its effect can be exerted only by faithful and vivid translation. Thus, to study translation of puns in English advertisements is of importance.
ⅢLiterature Review
McQuarrie discussed puns in advertising broadly, as a play or twist within an advertisement’s structure that serves to produce an echo or multiplication of meaning. For example, a recent advertisement shows men’s ties, arranged to form a bouquet, with the headlines: forget me knots. Another example, this for Bucks cigarettes, shows a cigarette pack with a picture of a stag, “Herd of These?” Based on Mcquarrie (Mcquarrie: 1996), the process of constructing a resonant advertisement is straightforward.
Tanaka (1994) discusses covert communication in the advertising and the inferential process of puns and metaphors. According to Tanaka, covert communication became one of the strategies the advertiser uses to make the audience “believe something about a product without her trusting in him, or indeed, despite her distrusting him”. Generally speaking, it has two advantages: (a) the audience may get a kind of pleasure out of processing some information; (b) more deeply involved in the process of interpreting, the audience pays more attention to the product advertised and shares a larger part of responsibility in recovering the advertiser’s meaning; accordingly, the advertiser advertiser can avoid taking certain responsibility for issues that are socially loaded. In their own words, “covert communication manipulates trigger to which the human mind is highly susceptible.” Puns, as Tanaka states, are an effective way of attracting the audience’s attention, for it conveys two meanings for the price of one word. It is true that in some cases the initial meaning of the puns is either rejected or just helping to obtain additional contextual effects the speaker intends. By denying initial meaning and creating unexpected consequences, they attract more attention and give the audience more psychological satisfaction. Undoubtedly, Tanaka has noticed the significance of contextual effect and the great role, which cognitive factors play in the advertiser makes in producing an advertisement; it is mostly on that to avoid social responsibility. She pays more attention to the cognitive factors than to the contextual effects, trying to survey the socially loaded aspect of the advertisers’ consideration. Tanaka does not explicitly address the question of how the 2
mass-media aspects of advertising affect Sperber and Wilson’s model, based as it is mainly on examples of one-to-one oral, linguistic, synchronic communication taking place in one spot.
Working within the tradition of rhetorical analysis, most Chinese scholars focus on expressive effect of advertising puns. They all make use of many examples to illustrate how puns can contribute to advertising communication.
Besides making a classification, Chen Changlai (Chen: 1994) concludes that the use of puns is the effort to meet the audience’s psychological needs; aesthetic needs and needs for good luck.
Peng jiayu (peng: 1999) regards advertising puns as a form of art and employs a variety of examples to tell people how to enjoy them.
Huang lei (huang: 2000) studies puns in Chinese and English advertisements by employing a variety of examples. He adopts a comparative method to investigate into the use and some negative effect of puns in Chinese and English advertising.
Xue bing and li yue’s (2000) explore some characteristics peculiar to puns and their function in the context of advertising, with particular stress exerted on the pragmatic and aesthetic perspectives.
Concerning puns in advertising language, li ruihe (li: 2001) focuses on the classification and functions and effect of puns. The paper states that advertisers prefer puns because puns contain profound cultural connotations which can activate the audience’s aesthetic enjoyment and desire for the advertised product.
Meng lin and Zhan jinhui’s(meng and zhan:2001) paper is about the techniques of puns and the translation of puns in English advertisements. There are various ways to form puns in advertisements. The translation of puns in advertisements is difficult because one must keep both the double meanings of a pun and the style of the advertisement in mind.
Articles collected in this field are scattered in magazines concerning rhetorical devices. Since most of them provide only simple generalizations at the superficial level, there will be just brief mentioning and commenting. In general, the research is lacking in a theoretical basis. Nevertheless, it may be helpful and illuminating for researchers who want to conduct further research.
ⅣKey Points
In my paper, the title of my thesis is puns in English advertisements and its translation. Obviously, my key points of this are studying punning and its translating strategies in English advertisements. I will discuss two main points in my paper. The first one is the application of puns 3
in English advertisements. In this point, I will introduce five concepts: homophonic puns, semantic puns, idiomatic puns, grammatical puns, mimetic puns. The other one is the translation of puns in English advertisements. I will bring in five strategies of translating puns in English advertisements: corresponding translation, separating translation, emphasizing translation, and compensating translation.
ⅤOutline
1 Language Characteristics of English Advertisements
1.1 Lexical Features
1.2 Syntactical Features
1.3 Discourse Features
1.3.1 Body Copy of an Advertisement
1.3.2 Differences in Body Copies
1.4 Rhetorical Features
2 A Brief Introduction to Punning
2.1 Definition of a Pun
2.2 Classification of Puns
3 Applications of Puns in English Advertisements
3.1 Homophonic Puns
3.2 Semantic Puns
3.3 Idiomatic Puns
3.4 Grammatical Puns
3.5 Mimetic Puns
4 The Translation of Puns in English Advertisements
4.1Corresponding Translation
4.2 Separating Translation
4.3 Emphasizing Translation
4.4 Compensating Translation
ⅥBibliography
[1] Augarde Tony. The Oxford Guide to Word Game. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984,
pp.67-98.
[2] Chesterman Andrew(ed). Readings in Translation Theory [C]. Helsinki: Oy Finn Lectura Ab, 4
1989, pp54-96.
[3] Cook G. The discourse of advertising. London: Routledge, 1992, pp.24-58.
[4] Jan de Waard & Eugene A. Nida. From One Language to Another. New York: Thomas
Nelson Publishers, 1986, pp.89-123.
[5] Leech,G. N. English in Advertising [M]. London: Longman.1966, pp.48-114.
[6] Nash, W. Rhetoric: The Wit of Persuasion, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1989, pp.81-109.
[7] Newmark, Peter. A Textbook of Translation. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language and
Education Press, 2001, pp.56-98
[8] 陈文伯. “一词两义的翻译”, (中国翻译) 第4期 23-25 1994
[9] 侯维瑞. 英语语体[M] 上海: 上海外语教育出版社,1999
[10] 孟琳. 英语广告中双关语的运用技巧及翻译[J] 中国翻译,2001,(5)
[11] 余立三. 英汉修辞比较与翻译 [M] 北京 商务印书馆 1985
[12] 张南峰, “Delabastita的双关语翻译理论在英汉翻译中的应用”, <中国翻译> 第1期:30-36,
2003
[13] 赵静. 广告英语[M] 北京 外语教学与研究出版社,1994,10
[14] 蒋柳. 英语双关语的认知研究 广西大学学报 哲学科学版,2007,(z2)
[15] 沈晓维. 英语广告双关语的译法探讨 科教文汇,2008,(23)
Ⅶ Schedule of Writing
2008.6~2008.7: Complete all the preparative work, including proposal for selecting the theme;
literature research and translation;
2008.8~2008.9: Complete my research proposal and reading-notes.
2008.9~2008.10: Complete the first draft;
2008.12~2009.1: Complete the second draft;
2009.2~2009.3: Complete the final form;
2009.3~2009.4: Typing, oral presentation, form filling.
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