A Study Of English-chinese Advertisement Translation From The Perspective Of Levinson’s Theory Of Economics Of Language

In recent years, due to the rapid development of global economy,the trade among countries is becoming prosperous. However, to advertise in foreign countries should first consider the translation for it plays a key role in the advertising effect. Therefore, more and more scholars are putting their focus on the advertising translation research.Advertisement belongs to vocative text, and its final purpose is to arouse customer’s buying desire. The succinct language is more pervasive and budget-saving than the redundant language. Thus, the advertising language usually has to be concise. Besides, the advertising translation should contain enough information when it wants to introduce the goods’ basic information. However, in practical operation, it is difficult to combine these two together. Consequently, this paper aims to discuss what strategies can be used to achieve these two essential purposes in the translation process.Levinson’s theory of economics of language conducts a research on the economical problems in speech, which offers the theoretical foundation for this paper. This theory includes three principles which are Q-principle, I-principle and M-principle. Every principle conducts a detailed analysis from the perspective of speaker’s maxim and recipient’s maxim. Q-principle requires the speaker not to provide a statement that has weaker information, unless the speaker provides a stronger statement which would contravene the I-principle. The auditor in Q-principle has to believe the speaker has already made the strongest statement. I-principlerefers that the speaker should say as little as necessary while the recipient should enrich the information of the speaker’s utterance. M-principle demands the speaker not to use unusual expression without any reason. If he or she does, the hearer has to speculate if there are other meanings hidden in this special expression.The first part of this thesis introduces the research situation of advertising translation abroad and at home and the existing problems.Then, it illustrates the definition, classification and functions of advertisement and analyzes the linguistic features from the lexical,syntactical and rhetorical aspects. After discussing the linguistic features, this part also analyzes the uneconomical phenomena existed in advertising translations. The analysis is mainly conducted from the aspects of semantic failure, lexical redundancy, syntactical redundancy and culture failure. Among them, the semantic failure is classified into two parts which are misunderstanding and lack of key information. The second part expounds the theoretical basis of this paper- Levinson’s theory of Economics of Language and discusses the feasibility to apply this theory to studying the translation strategy.The last part puts forward a series of translation strategies by using Levinson’s theory of Economics of Language. The strategies in all have four categories that include phonological-related translation strategies, word-related translation strategies, syntactical translation strategies and other translation strategies. Among them, “other translation strategies” contain some strategies that are not suitable to be classified into other three strategies while they are also appropriate to translate advertisement. These strategies areconducive to keep the conciseness, information and vocative effect in translation.