外文翻译--浅谈广告英语的语言特点

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1、中文 1600字 浅论广告英语的语言特点 No other statement could have summed up the charm of advertisement than what Aldous Huxley has commented. As he has said advertisement as a literary form is the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, and the most pregnant in curious possibilities. In his comment h

2、e asserted advertisement is a literary form and the copywriting process is the delightful and salubrious exercise for the mind. But all in all, what is advertising, and what makes it unique? 1. History of Advertisement Advertisement emerged from the womb of commodity production and exchange. The con

3、dition for the existence of advertising is at least a segment of the population must live above the subsistence level. When this situation occurs it also becomes necessary for the producers of materially unnecessary goods to do something to make people want to acquire their commodities. (Vestergaard

4、 and Schroder 4) The embryonic form of advertising in the world is street cries, which exist even today. Advertising was not unknown in ancient Greece and Rome, but advertising as we recognize it did not start until the seventeenth century in the West. It was at about this time that newspaper began

5、to circulate. Before that, it is printing which was first invented in China and then introduced to the West that played a vital role in the production of print advertising. Classified (small ads) types of advertising were dominant before the nineteenth century and style and language used in ads at t

6、hat time tended to be direct and informative. The industrial Revolution, which began in England in the mid-1700s and reached the United States by the early 1800s, facilitated mass-production of goods. Meanwhile advertising became more and more important in the industrial market. The great breakthrou

7、gh for advertising came only in the late nineteenth century. Technology and mass-production techniques were then sufficiently developed for more firms to be able to turn out products of roughly the same quality and at roughly the same price. This brought on a crisis of over-production and under cons

8、umption which meant that the market needed to be stimulated by advertising. At this time advertising changed its function from proclamation to persuasion. In the twentieth century, advertising developed rapidly alongside the advent of new media-radio and television in succession. According to Richar

9、d Pollays content analysis of two thousand print ads from ten leading magazines in the USA, ads have progressively turned towards the emotional rather than the informative approach and there is a shift seeing human nature as rational to seeming it as emotional. Today in China, while our economic str

10、ucture is shifting from the entirely planned economy to the socialist market economy system, advertising is becoming more and more active and sophisticated. In 1992, Chinas advertising expenditure reached $ 862 million, among the fastest growing countries in Asia. This year with the entry of China i

11、nto WTO, this expenditure figure will undoubtedly rise up, which will support the view that advertising is an indispensable means for providing the information that all market-oriented industrialized societies need for their economies to function efficiently. 2.Definitions of Advertising After a bri

12、ef introduction of the classifications and roles of advertising, we now come to the definitions of advertising. From different perspectives or purposes, the definitions might also vary. In English, the word advertise has its origin in advertere in Latin, meaning to inform somebody of something, to b

13、ring into notice or to draw attention to something, etc. In Chinese, the equivalent term guanggao means widely announce. The father of modern advertising, Albert Lasker said that advertising was salesmanship in print. Although the definition was given long before the advent of radio and television,

14、and the nature and scope of advertising at that time were considerably different than they are today, this often-repeated saying indicates that the ultimate objective of advertising is to sell. Obviously it is not a working definition because we cannot use it to cover all advertisements. Today, a wi

15、dely quoted working definition of advertising was put forward by Courtland L. Bovee and William F. Arens : Advertising is the nonpersonal communication of information, usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature, about products (goods or services) or ideas by identified sponsors through variou

16、s media.(Cook,Guy. TheDiscourse of Advertising. London: Routledge,1992) Another linguist Bolen defines advertising as a Paid, non-personal communication through various mass media by business firms, nonprofit organizations, and individuals who are in some way identified in the message and who hope t

17、o inform or persuade members of a particular audience. (Carter, Ronald and Goddard, Angela, Reah Danuta et al. Working with Texts. London: Routledge,1997) If the definitions of advertising were too vague and abstract to comprehend, a few words of its function would help to clarify this crucial term.

18、 Broadly speaking, advertisements have at least one of two functions: informing or persuading, although overlap may often take place in one single piece. The trick here is that an informative advertisement informs the customer about goods, services, or ideas and then tells how to get them means of a

19、n identified sponsor (Bolen 6). Examples of informative advertisements are not a few, ranging from flyers to insertions in magazine and newspapers, all of that aim to advertise new products/services or special prices on certain products/services. This type of advertisement gives basic, factual infor

20、mation and sometimes shows a photos or an illustration of the product/service to give the target audience a better view about the advertised product. Persuasive advertisements are thus the instruments used by advertisers who have defined their target audiences and determined the effect they hope to

21、achieve through persuasive advertisements in the media (Bolen 9). And a persuasive advertisement should try to persuade the potential customers to buy the new product. (Bolen 6) The persuasive function is not only limited to attracting the potential customer into buying a certain object, but also in

22、cluding the selling of services, ideas, norms and values. To summarize, we would get the idea that firstly advertising is a communication process. Secondly, at least a medium is used. Thirdly, this communication process has a definite purpose to convince the target audience. The above three characte

23、ristics suggest advertising is closely connected with the society, employing its media, interconnecting with its people and guiding their buying habit. 原文来源 ： Carter, Ronald and Goddard, Angela, Reah Danuta et al. Working with Texts. London: Routledge,1997， 081（ 1）： 2-3 译文正文： 再也找不到其他语句可以像 Aldous Hux

24、ley 的描述一样总结出广告的魅力。正如他所说的广告作为一种文学形式，一种最复杂的文学形式，同时也最富有好奇的可能性。在他的评论里，他认为广告是一种文学形式，广告文字撰写的过程对锻炼大脑来说往往是愉快的和有益于身心健康的。 1.广告的历史 广告起源于商品的生产和交换。广告的存在条件是“全部人口中至少有一部分的生活水平高于生计水平”。当这种情况发生时，生产不必要物质消费品的商品生产者有必要想办法让消费者需要或购买他们的产品。 (Vestergaard and Schroder 4) 广告的雏形是街头叫卖，这种形式即使在今天也依然存在。广告在古希腊和古罗马是不被人所知的，直到西方十七世纪广告才被世

25、人所认知。也正是这个时候，报纸才开始流传。在那之前，中国最先发明了印刷术，该种技术传入西方后对广告印刷行业起到了至关重要的作用。“分类广告”（ 小广告）在十九世纪以前在广告行业中占主导地位，在当时，它的风格和广告语往往是简单直接，内容翔实。工业革命始于十八世纪中叶的英国，它于十九世纪早期传入美国，这促进了商品的大规模生产。广告业的巨大突破是在十九世纪后期才开始的。企业中大规模生产技术的充分发展使市场能够有大量差不多相同质量和价格的商品，这引发了生产过剩和消费力不足等危机，这意味着市场需要广告刺激消费。这时广告也从它的公告功能转变为具有说服的功能。在二十世纪，广告也伴随着多媒体和电视的相继问世而

26、快速发展。 根据来源于美国十大领先杂志 2000 条平面广告 分析， Richard Pollay 认为广告已经逐渐转向情感渗透而不仅是信息传播，这也是人性从理性转向感性的过程。 当今的中国，经济结构由完全的计划经济转向社会主义市场经济体制，广告的发展也变得越来越活跃和成熟。在 1992 年，在亚洲发展最快的国家中，中国的广告支出达到 8.62 亿美元。随着中国加入世贸组织，广告支出费用无疑也增长起来，这也证明了广告已成为为面向市场的工业化社会提供有效的经济运作信息的不可或缺的手段。 2.广告的定义 在简要的介绍了广告的分类和作用之后，我们现在来定义 一下广告。从不同的视角或目的来看，也会使得

27、广告的定义多样化。在英语中，“ advertise”一词起源于拉丁语的“ advertere”，意为“告知某人某事”，“使人注意”，“对什么东西引起注意”等等。在中文中，其等效属于“ guanggao”意味着“广泛地公布” 现代广告之父， Albert Lasker 说过，广告即是“纸上推销术”。虽然早在收音机和电视的出现之前其定义就被给出，但是当时的广告性质和范围和现在相比都大大不同。人们常说广告的最终目标是用销售量来表现的。很显然，这并不是一个工作定义，因为我们并不能用它 涵盖所有的广告。如今另一个广泛引用的工作定义被 Courtland L. Bovee 和 William F. Are

28、ns 提出了：“广告是非个人信息的沟通，在本质上，通常是有诱惑力的为产品（商品和服务）或各种媒体赞助商所确定的想法而付账。” (Cook,Guy. TheDiscourse of Advertising. London: Routledge,1992) 如果对于广告其定义的理解过于模糊，其功能的一些词句也许可以有助于阐明这一中心词。广义地说，广告至少有两个功能：通知或说服，虽然同意部分很可能发生重叠 。其中的技巧则是一个内容丰富的广告告知了“指定赞助商的客户们关于商品、服务、观念的想法，以及然后怎么让他们得到这些。” (Bolen 6)信息广告的例子不少，从传单、插入杂志和报纸的广告，这些全部都旨在宣传新的产品 /服务或是这些确切产品 /服务的特殊价格。这种广告