An Analysis Of The Application And Translation Strategies Of Puns In English Advertisements Based On Functional Equivalence Theory

Advertising English possesses many characteristics, such as originality, flexibility of language usage and diversity of forms. Apart from the distinguishing features at lexical and syntactic levels, rhetorical vehicles, also called decorative devices of language, are frequently and widely used in advertising English. Pun, a concise way to express humor and wits, is favored by both advertisers and consumers to enhance the appeal of language. With sufficient example-explanation, this thesis provides a detailed discussion of and classification, application as well as translation methods of puns in English advertisements.Researching on pun in English, the author has noticed that there are many categories of puns in different levels, qualifying it with many characteristics and features. Thus, it has been considered "untranslatable" for a long time due to the linguistic and cultural divergences between English and Chinese. However, the author holds that, to a certain extent, translatability of puns is realizable. Although some effects achieved from the source language may be lost in the process of translation, translators can make various compensation and adjustment to reach a similar effect, in that "there can be no absolute correspondence between two languages."To provide a theoretical foundation for translation of puns in English advertisements, this thesis refers to and takes as theoretical basis Eugene Nida’s functional equivalence theory. Nida’s functional equivalence theory is generally respected in translation field, which puts emphasis on "readers’ response". In addition, this thesis proposes that "correspondence in meaning and similarity in function" should be regarded as basic criteria for translation of puns in English advertisement.Based on detailed research on literature documents, and adopting Nida’s functional equivalence theory, this thesis, on the one hand, spends a lot amount of ink on analyzing and illustrating cases; on the other hand, it concludes five translation methods and tries to prove them. The five translation methods are word for word translation, division, naturalization, focused translation, and annotation.Advertisements fall into the same category of vocative text types with the purpose of carrying information from commercials to costumers and trying the best to inspire their desire to purchase goods. Therefore, when translating a pun in English advertisements, one has to take the communicative principle as the purpose and in the meanwhile, take the understanding of target language readers as the goal. What’s more, the initiative spirit of the translator is about to be made good is. In other words, a good translator shall try different translation methods to find a basically corresponding and equivalent’appropriate text" to actually reach the goal of translation.