论文总字数：44660字

摘 要

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Research background 1

1.2 Research purpose 1

1.3 Significance of the research 2

1.4 Structure of the thesis 2

2. Literature Review 4

2.1 Overview of Skopos theory 4

2.2 Previous research on puns translation at home and abroad 5

3. An Analysis of Puns in Advertisement 8

3.1 Definition 8

3.1.1 Commercial advertisement 8

3.1.2 Puns 8

3.2 Classification of puns 9

3.3 Effects of puns in advertisement 10

4. Puns Translation in Advertisements from the Perspective of Skopostheorie 12

4.1 Barriers of puns translation in advertisement 12

4.2 Skopostheorie-based principles of puns translation in advertisement 13

4.2.1 Readers’ response principle 13

4.2.2 Target language and target culture orientation principle 14

4.2.3 Faithfulness principle 16

4.3 Strategies applied in puns translation 17

4.3.1 Translating puns into puns 17

4.3.2 Translating puns into ordinary expressions 19

4.3.3 Creative translation 20

5. Conclusion 22

5.1 Major findings 22

5.2 Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research 22

References 24

Acknowledgments

I really want to thank those who have helped and supported me during my process of writing this thesis.

First, I would like to give my gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Chen Haitao, who has offered me constant guidance from the beginning of the topic selection. His professional knowledge, strict self-discipline and easy-going personality have far-reaching impact on me. Prof. Chen has given me precious instructions on my studies as well as my life.

Next, my gratitude should be given to the professors in the School of Foreign Languages and Literature in Nanjing Tech University. They have shared their academic knowledge and profound thoughts with us, which creates a great academic atmosphere for me, so that my paper could be more rigorous.

Then, I feel like giving my appreciation to my friends accompanying me when I was confronted with barriers in both thesis and life. I enjoy communicating with them and without their help, I couldn't successfully solved all kinds of difficulties in life.

Last but not least, I would like to express my profound love to my family, whose unwavering care and strong support in life contributed a lot to the successful completion of the present paper.

Abstract

Due to the rapid development of globalization and e-commerce, advertisements of products from abroad can be seen everywhere. Pun, as a unique and vivid rhetorical device, is widely used by advertisers. However, translators may find it difficult to translate advertisement with puns properly due to differences between Chinese and English languages and cultures. Recently, puns translation in advertisements has gradually attracted the attention of translation researchers. They studied puns translation strategies and techniques in commercial advertisements from German Functional Theory, Relevance Principle and many other theoretical perspectives, and summed up a series of pun translation techniques, such as free translation. However, few studies are under the guidance of Skopos theory. Skopos theory was proposed by Hans Fimmer, and developed and perfected by Christine Nord. This theory suggests that it is the purpose of translation that decides translation strategy. Since advertisements have an ultimate goal of persuading consumers to purchase the products or services they promote, it’s essential to study puns translation in advertisements under the guidance of Skopostheorie.

Under the guidance of Skopos theory, and combined with the characteristics of English advertisements and a large number of translation examples, this thesis attempts to sum up the translation strategies of Puns in advertisements, which provides a clear and orderly way of thinking for pun translators and has guiding significance for puns translation.

Keywords: Skopostheorie; Puns translation; Translation strategy

中文摘要

由于经济全球化和电子商务领域的快速发展，外国的产品广告在我们的生活中随处可见。新颖简洁独特的广告方能吸引消费者的眼球，促使消费者做出购买行为，而双关语是一种独特、巧妙的修辞方式，形象生动，被广告商广泛使用。然而，由于中英语言和文化上的巨大差异，带有双关语的英文广告给译者带来了诸多困难。近些年来英语广告中的双关语翻译逐渐吸引翻译研究者的关注，翻译研究者们从德国功能理论、关联原则等诸多理论视角研究英语广告中双关语的翻译策略及技巧，总结出一系列双关语翻译技巧，如意译法等，但目的论视角下的研究却很少。目的论由汉斯˙费米尔提出，由克里斯汀˙诺德发展并加以完善。目的论指出翻译目的决定翻译策略. 由于广告的最终目的是说服消费者购买他们促销的产品或服务，因此在目的论指导下研究广告中的双关语翻译至关重要。

本文尝试在目的论的指导下，结合广告英语自身特点及大量的翻译实例，总结出英语广告中双关语的翻译策略，为双关语翻译者提供条理清晰的思路，对双关语翻译具有实际借鉴意义。

关键词：目的论；双关语翻译；翻译策略

1. Introduction

1.1 Research background

With global commodity economy advancing rapidly and advertisements becoming an increasingly important tool for the promotion of commodities, puns have gotten the favor of advertisers because of its novelty, briefness and rich meanings. The popularity of puns in commodity economy has caught the attention of many researchers. Meanwhile, various foreign products and services are flooding into China, as well as their advertisements. Also Chinese enterprises are energetically trying to expend overseas markets. However, people who lack foreign background may inevitably find it difficult to figure out what those advertisements really mean. Therefore, the need for advertisement translation becomes urgent and the advertisement translation emerges. Scholars abroad and domestic have undergone abundant researches both theoretically and practically.

Although there are abundant studies on the understanding of puns in advertisements with the support of cognitive and pragmatic theories such as Conceptual Integration Theory and Relevance Theory, few studies are under the guidance of Skopos theory. Skopostheorie proposed by German scholar Hans J. Vermeer has important guiding significance for advertising translation. This theory suggests that it is the purpose of translation that decides translation strategy. Since advertisements have an ultimate goal of attracting consumers' attention and persuading them to purchase the products or services they promote no matter what languages and forms the advertisements adopt, it’s essential to study puns translation in advertisements under the guidance of Skopostheorie.

1.2 Research purpose

This thesis attempts to conduct a research on puns translation in advertisement under the guidance of Skopostheorie to analyze the translation strategies employed by the translator and puts forward several strategies to deal with certain issues that translators may encounter in pun translation of advertisements. The author tries to find out the factors that impede translators to do their jobs and matters needing attention according to the special features of advertisements and puns.

1.3 Significance of the research

This thesis is of theoretical and practical significance.

Theoretically, although there are abundant studies about puns translation in advertisements with the support of cognitive and pragmatic theories mentioned before, few have attempted to study puns translation in advertisements under the guidance of Skopostheorie. Therefore, this thesis can provide a relatively new perspective to researches and may enlighten further researches.

Practically, principles and strategies put forward in this thesis can be applied in many circumstances by translators. Advertisements have an ultimate goal of attracting consumers' attention and persuading them to purchase the products or services they promote, so under the guidance of Skopostheorie, several feasible translation principles and standards can be put forward.

1.4 Structure of the thesis

This thesis intends to present a systematic analysis of puns translation in advertisement, and puts forward several principles and strategies to deal with certain issues that translators may encounter in the process of advertisement translation. It is divided into five parts.

Chapter one: introduction. It includes research background, research purpose, significance of the research and thesis structure.

Chapter two: literature review. It introduces the background and the development of the Skopostheorie and involves overview of relevant researches related to puns in advertisement translation at home and abroad.

Chapter three: analysis of puns in advertisements. It includes the definition of puns and advertisements and introduces the classification and effects of puns.

Chapter four: puns translations in advertisements from the perspective of Skopostheorie. It presents and proves the usefulness of Skopostheorie in English-Chinese commercial translation examples and examines the specific translation strategies under the guidance of Skopostheorie.

Chapter five: conclusion. It summarizes findings of this thesis and points out some limitations. It also offers few suggestions to future studies.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Overview of Skopos theory

The word Skopos is derived from Greek，which means ‘aim’ or ‘purpose’. Skopostheorie was proposed in 1970s by Hans J. Vermeer and was further developed by Christiane Nord. This theory suggests that it is the purpose of translation that decides translation strategy.

This translation theory is different from the previous ones. It is more functional and social, stresses the interactional and pragmatic aspects of translation and focuses more on the communicational function of translation．Therefor it studies translation from a new perspective which is beyond the pure linguistic boundary and enlarges the scope of translation studies．

Generally, the development of Skopostheorie goes through four stages.

The first stage is when Katharina Reiss introduced a model of functional relationship into translation criticism. Reiss believes that the function and purpose in the target text determine the translation text. Therefore, translation should adopt appropriate strategies to meet the needs of specific purpose of target text. The most appropriate translation should correspond to the original text about the content, language structure, and aspects of communication work.

The second stage is when Hans J. Vermeer proposed the Skopos theory, which is considered as a great breakthrough in the functionalist theory. According to Vermeer's theory, translation is based on the source text and is a behavior with purpose. In Vermeer’s theory framework, translation must follow rules. In the first place, it is the Skopos rule. There are two rules translators should follow: the rules of intra-textual coherence and the rule of inter-textual coherence. The rules of intra-textual coherence indicate that the target text should be understandable to the receiver. Translator should fully consider the culture background and social environment of target recipients. The latter rule indicates that target text should be related to the source text.

The third stage is when Manttari developed Vermeer’s Skopos theory and put forward translation action in 1984. Translation action implies the process of information transmission in order to achieve the cross cultural and cross language conversion of information, while translation is only a cross cultural conversion action in a textual form.

The fourth stage is when Christine Nord developed the Skopos theory. For the first time, Christine Nord summarized all the academic thinking of functionalist in English. In 1998, Nord published the book Text Analysis in Translation, in which Nord put forward function plus loyalty, indicating that translators should be responsible for all factors involved in the translation process and be loyal to the target text recipient. Nord’s function plus loyalty theory made an improvement to the functionalist approaches.

2.2 Previous research on puns translation at home and abroad

In 1972, advertisement translation was introduced for the first time in Hurbin’s article Can One Translate the Language of Advertising. Hurbin believed that there could be several translations for the source text and the translator need to decide which one is the most suitable one. Hurbin also held the view that it would be easier for translators to compile a glossary of advertising languages so that they can easily find the most appropriate equivalent sentence between the source text and the target text. Delabastita (1994) divided puns into four types put forward 8 techniques involved in puns translation. Geis (1982) emphasized the practical value of advertising in his book The language of Television Advertising. In 1985, Vestergaard and Schrader had undergone a comprehensive analysis of advertisement language from the perspective of sociolinguistic. They focused more on the social motivation of advertisement implied in puns rather than the explicit information of advertisement. In 1970s, translators’ major concern shifted from equivalence to functionalist approach. Mathieu (2000) explore the relationship between advertisement and translation in terms of globalization and he believed that the translator’s main goal is to accomplish functionally equivalent translation. Peter Newmark (2001) explained specifically how puns should be translated in different circumstances in his book A Textbook of Translation. Jacqueline (2003) published The Translation of Puns and put forward three possible approaches for pun translation, which is the translation-isomorph, the translation-homomorph and the translation hertermorph.

With the rapid development of globalization and China’s industry, foreign companies are eager to expand their business in China, and vice versa. Therefore, many scholars start to study puns translation. Li Guonan (1986) put forward two approaches in puns translation, which are preserving puns and making an adaptation in the target text. Nie Ke(2002) researched on the nature of pun and pun translation from perspective social semiotic. He proposed three types of meaning in the target text, which are the linguistic meaning, the referential meaning and the pragmatic meaning. Xin Hongjuan (2002) explored the various factors influencing puns translation. He believed that apart from linguistic and cultural factors, pun translation is also influenced by source text’s purpose, translator’s subjectivity, target text recipient’s purpose and so on. Yao Jun (2004) used the conceptual integration theory to analyze the production and interpretation of puns in advertisements, and explored the unique cognitive functions of advertising puns. Hou Guojin (2007) conducted a cognitive-pragmatic analysis of pun and various problems of puns translation. Hou put forward seven tips for puns translation and used abundant examples to illustrate the difficulty and translatability of puns. Yuan Hongmei (2009) researched puns from the cognitive perspective. She used conceptual integration network to explore the relevant psychological mechanism which audience use to understand the puns and intention of advertisements. Tian Longju (2010) applied figure-ground theory to analyze puns translation and discover its inner cognitive mechanism. Through analysis , Tian found out that pun is a kind of marked language. Kang Xiaoyun (2015) explained the operation modes of pun generation and understanding, and expounded the main restrictions on pun usage. Chen Jiaxu amp; Chen Yanhui (2019) discussed puns translation from the perspective of relevance theory. They believed that in order to convey the dual context of the pun to the target reader, the translator needs to reflect the various communication cues contained in the original hinge in the target text.

3. An Analysis of Puns in Advertisement

3.1 Definition

3.1.1 Commercial advertisement

The word “advertising” originates from the Latin word “advertere”, which means to notice, induce and communicate. Advertising is an important mean of introducing and promoting goods. The American Marketing Association's definition of advertising is: "Advertising is carried out by specific advertisers in a non-personal manner with persuasive information such as products, services, or planning topics through a variety of media through paid media."

As a specific business form, commercial advertising shoulders the commercial mission of stimulating consumption and promoting sales, and at the same time it carries out social, ideological, cultural, and moral concepts. Therefore, advertising is not only a utilitarian and profit-oriented economic behavior, but also an ideological and cultural social phenomenon.

3.1.2 Puns

Here are some definitions of puns in different English dictionaries.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines pun as “the use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more meanings or different associations or the use of two or more words of the same sound with different meanings, so as to produce a humorous effect, a play on words.” The Webster’s New World Dictionary defines pun as “the humorous use of a word，or of words which are formed or sounded alike but have different meanings，in such a way as to play on two or more of the possible applications；a play on words．” In the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, pun is defined as an amusing use of a word or phrase that has two meanings，or words with the same sound but different meanings．

3.2 Classification of puns

Theoretically, puns can be classified into five categories：homophonic pun，paronomasia，antalaclasis，sylleptic pun and aseismus．

1. Homophonic pun

This form of pun is actually based on homophones．It refers to the use of words with same pronunciation but with different spelling and meaning．

E.g.1 Have a nice trip，buy-buy! (A tax-free shop advertisement)

At the first sight，it is only a farewell of a trip，but when people give it a second thought, they will find out that it’s “buy—buy”, not “bye-bye”．These two word phrases with some pronunciation form a homophonic pun．By doing this, the advertiser reminds people to buy things in his shop in a nice and polite way. This advertisement can leave good impressions to consumers and promote sales at the same time.

1. Paronomasia

Paronomasia means the use of two words which are similar or almost the same in pronunciation but different in form and meaning．

E.g.2 Not fairly white——fairy white．(Washing powder advertisement)

In this ad，the pun lies in the word “fairly” which is similar with the word “fairy” in sound．It makes use of the similar sound to emphasize the function of this product of whitening of “fairy white” in order to attract customers．

1. Antalaclasis

Antalaclasis involves a word used twice or more, but each time with two more distinct meanings．

E.g.3 Make time for Time. (TIME magazine advertisement)

The word “time” is used twice, and the first “time” means “时间” in Chinese, while the latter means the name of magazine. This advertisement attempts to emphasize the importance of TIME magazine and people should spend more time reading it.

1. sylleptic pun

Sylleptic pun is similar to antalaclasis，but the word used as a pun occurs 0nly once．This is the most frequently employed device of pun．

E.g.4 The unique spirit of Canada, we bottled it. (Wine advertisement)

In this advertisement, sylleptic pun lies in the word “spirit”. On the one hand, it refers to “the set of characteristics, ideas and beliefs held by a group of people. On the other hand, it has the meaning of “strong distilled alcoholic drink”. Therefore, this advertisement praises both the spirit of Canadians and the taste of wine (product).

1. Grammatical pun

This is a kind of pun based on some grammatical uses, such as ellipsis of some structures, phrases or words; or some words or phrases which have two or more grammatical functions.

E.g.5 Coke refreshes you like no other can. (Coke advertisement)

In this advertisement, the word “can” serves as a modal verb means “be able to” and a noun means “container for beverage”. Consumers who have seen this advertisement will easily understand the double context and get interested.

3.3 Effects of puns in advertisement

1. Information conveying

The fundamental function of advertising is information conveying, it serves as an interaction between producers and consumers. Therefore，if an advertisement transmits more information with less words，the possibility of remembering the products or services the advertisement tries to tell is much higher．The characteristic of pun is to use simple texts to communicate rich information to the consumers so it’s better than other rhetorical device．The advertisement with a pun not only describes the features of products or services，but also tries to get the customers be amazed and enjoy the beauty and creativity of an advertisement．

2. Humorous effect

Humor can make people relax and feel happy，and people’s attention are often captured by humorous things．When people get pleasant feelings and experiences by reading an advertisement，there are bigger chances that they will purchase the products or services．

3. Creative effect

The advertiser’s capacity of creating brilliant advertisements with puns can always amaze people. The puns can increase the novelty of advertisement and can easily amaze consumers，and by reading it deeply consumers will be surprised with the deep meaning the ad intends to convey.

4. Puns Translation in Advertisements from the Perspective of Skopostheorie

4.1 Barriers of puns translation in advertisement

There are two main forms of common linguistic barriers.

The first is the structural barrier. Every language has distinctive set of grammar rules, making each word unique in comparison with other words. As mentioned in Chapter 3, grammatical puns are one of the most important puns, which uses different parts of speech of words to implied two or more meanings. Linguistic barriers emerge when the grammatical rules serves as an essential role in expressing the two or more meanings the puns intends to mean.

Another familiar form of linguistic barrier is phonetic barrier. Basically, English and Chinese have distinctive phonetic systems. English language is alphabetic, while Chinese language is ideographic. When the source language of the pun is based on the English alphabet, the translation from English into Chinese would be difficult to achieve without losing information.

E.g.6 Trust us. Over 5000 ears of experience. (a hearing aid)

The pun lies in the use of “ears” which sound the same with the word “years”. Therefore, it can be interpreted as this brand of hearing aid has undergone the tests of countless users for a long time. But when we try to translate this slogan into Chinese which is based on an ideographic system, the homophonic pun of “ear” and “year” is totally impossible to translate into Chinese equivalently due to the word “耳朵” and “年” are two different and unconnected words in Chinese.

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