A Study On Translation Of Puns In Advertisement From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Advertisement, as a mass medium of communication, plays a magnificent role in both foreign and domestic trade. It can be seen wherever people go such as on newspapers, magazines, as well as on the broadcasts. The prior and ultimate goal of an advertisement is to convince people the product’s advantages and to persuade them into purchasing. In order to achieve such goal, various devices have been adopted to enhance the advertisement effect. A welcomed approach is to use puns. The pun, as a rhetoric device, is a word play by applying one word or phrase to imply two or more meanings, usually used in various forms of literary works to create a brief but humorous effect.The skopos theory is generally believed to be an acceptable theory to guide the translation of puns in advertisement. Put forward by Hans Vermeer, it regards the expected purpose of text as its prior consideration, while translation method and strategy is determined by the expected function and purpose of the target text. Such theory is accordant with the goal of advertisement translation, thus enabling target text recipients to appreciate a same or similar effect caused by the source text. This thesis aims to explore and illustrates with examples the translation of puns in advertisement from the perspective of skopos theory, and concludes practical and useful strategies.The main part of this thesis, firstly, gives an overall introduction of the definition, categories and functions of puns in advertisement. Secondly, it discusses two obstacles: linguistic barrier and cultural barrier. In addition, the thesis puts forward three principles that the advertisement translation should follow based on skopos theory:the readers’ response principle, the target language and target culture orientation principle and the faithfulness principle. Based on those principles, some translation strategies are introduced. An ideal strategy is to translation the source advertisement with puns into a same or similar one in target language, which is difficult to achieve. Under this circumstance, the translator can sacrifice the form of puns while preserving the double meaning, adopt another rhetoric device, or give a creative translation while respecting the source text. At last, the thesis gives a natural conclusion of translation of puns in advertisement, as well as limitations of research and suggestions of future work.