ABSTRACT
As an applied language, advertising English has its own specific language style and features. With appealing dictions, succinct sentence structures, rich connotation and varied use of rhetoric devices, advertisements surprisingly give full play to the charm of language, using the simplest language to express the most complex meanings. Advertisements aim to stimulate people’s desire for shopping. Therefore, manufacturers wrack their brains to be creative with the use of rich puns. The artful use of such rhetorical devices makes advertisements connotative, humorous, vivid and witty—impressive in a roundabout way. Thus pun becomes widely and frequently used to achieve purposed effects of advertisements. This article aims to elaborate on the various forms of puns such as homophonic pun, paronomasia, antalaclasis and syllepsis, and to probe into some common techniques of translating English puns in advertisements such as fit translation, semantic translation, sets translation, priority translation, and compensation translation.
Keywords: English advertisements; pun; translation techniques
Contents
1.Introduction of pun 1
1.1 The definition and features of pun 1
1.2Classification of pun 2
2. Function of puns in English advertisement 3
2.1 Rhetoric function 3
2.2 Pragmatic function 4
3. Translation of puns in English advertisement 4
3.1The importance of pun translation in English advertisement 4
3.2Delabastita's theory for translating puns 5
3.3 Translating techniques of puns in English advertisement 6
4.Conclusion 11
Acknowledgements 12
References 13