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西南大学育才学院
本科毕业论文
An Analysis on Advertising
Language
Between English and Chinese
学
院
外国语学院
专
业
英语
年
级
2007
级
学
号
2007108004
姓
名
陈
港
指导教师
徐
红
成
绩
二〇一一年五月
Outline
Chen ii
Thesis: Advertising
language between English and Chinese has many
similarities and differences
with a
very important position and role in the sales of
business.
I. Introduction
A.
The role of advertising language in modern
business
B. The features of a
successful advertisement
II.
Similarities of advertising language between
English and Chinese
A. Similarities in diction
B.
Similarities in rhetoric devices
C. Similarities
in syntax
D. Similarities in tonality
III. Differences of advertising
language between English and Chinese
A. Linguistic
differences
B. Cultural differences
IV
. The realization of
localization
A. Definition of localization
B.
Importance of localization
C. Realization of
localization of
advertising
language
V
. Conclusion
Abstract
Chen iii
Advertising takes many
forms, in most of which, however, language is of
crucial importance
，
as an
important means to enhance advertising expression,
it has a very important position and role.
To sell commodities or increase sales
is the ultimate goal of advertising. People live
in a world of
advertising and
advertisement has become an important and
inseparable part of people’s daily life.
People have a good impression from a
wonderful advertisement, and that also contributes
a lot to
increase in sales of business.
This paper aims at dealing with advertising
language between English
and Chinese.
This paper tends to discuss this in three parts.
The first part introduces similarities of
advertising language between English
and Chinese in terms of diction, rhetoric, syntax,
and tonality.
The second part mainly
makes an analysis of cultural differences between
advertising language in
English
and
in
Chinese.
The
third
part
deals
with
the
issue
of
localization
in
translation
of
advertising language between English
and Chinese.
Chen 1
An Analysis on Advertising
Language Between English and Chinese
Advertisement, as the outcome of
development in productivity, plays a vital role in
modern
production and consumption. It
has become a basic condition of commodity economy.
It is an
efficient
way
and
powerful
tool
to
publicize
business
information.
The
main
purpose
of
an
advertisement is to catch people’s
attention by means of
a short message
and persuade or entice
them to purchase
their products. To produce wonderful
advertisements and enhance advertising
expression, it is natural to resort to
advertising languages. Advertising languages is
the essence
of
advertisement
because
of
its
key
factor
to
make
consumers
show
interest,
draw
attention,
arouse desire, and take action
eventually.
In
addition,
with
the
development
of
the
globalization
and
the
international
trade,
foreign
exchange
between
advertisements
is
more
frequent.
Foreign
advertisements,
some
differences
from
the
general
domestic
advertising,
are
commercial
advertisements
crossing
borders,
which
represents
not only
products’ quality and reputation, but also
a national cultural quality and value
orientation.
Therefore,
we
must
stand
in
a
strategic
height
to
treat
languages
when
launching
advertisings; it
is realistic significance for producing excellent
advertisements .
What
kind
of
advertisement
is
successful?
And
what
features
a
successful
advertisement
should
possess?
American
Marketing
Manager’s
Handbook
points
out
that
an
advertisement
should
have
four
functions:
AIDA,
which
represent
four
words
—
Attention,
Interest,
Desire,
Action.
(1).
Attention
—
a good
advertisement should attract the consumer to
direct their attention to
the product
of it.
(2). Interest
—the
introduction and publicity of an advertisement
should arouse consumers’
great
interest.
(3).
Desire
—the
publicity
of
advertising
should
stimulate
consumers’
desire
to
buy
the
product, and make them
realize that this product is just what they want.
(4). Action
—
the
advertising makes consumer to response to the
advertising information and
evoke them
to take the action of purchasing.
There
are similarities and differences in many areas of
advertising languages
，
so
linguistic
study
is
actually
a
kind
of
scientific
comparative
analysis
of
the
world
language
integrated.
Through
the
contrastive
analysis
and
research,
we
can
not
only
further
understand
the
Chen 2
characteristics of native language but
understand more about foreign language.
Whatever
language
the
advertisement
employs,
they
share
the
same
objective,
that
is
to
persuade
consumers to buy the products advertised with the
purpose of stimulating demand and
increasing sales of business. There is
an inevitable connection between advertising
language and
its corresponding
function. Similarities of advertising language
between English and Chinese are
discussed in four terms as follows.
Advertising language pursues novelty in
diction
and grammar, that
will
catch the
people's
attention and interesting then
reach the goal of communication. The function of
advertising is to
provide and
disseminate information, attract consumer, exploit
market, and promise the quality.
Therefore, advertisers must pay
attention to
its impelling
language,
and the first
step
is to
use
popular
and
oral
language
and
make
it
understood
and
memorized
easily.
Advertisers
likes
to
adopt
those
“
little
”
words,
the
general
and
popular
words,
avoiding
using
the
“big”
words
,
usually
simple
and
informal,
abstract
words
or
too
specialized
terminology.
Concise
although
some words are, they can deepen
impression.
Generally
speaking, advertising message is concise and easy
and readable. Simple words, in
particular, multi-purpose simple
sentences
，
monosyllabic
words make customers easy to take
clear
notice
of
the
terms
of
advertisement.
In
terms
of
language
form,
the
generalization
principle,
that is,
“
keep it short and
sweet
”
, especially in
advertising slogans, it is perfect choice
that instant advertisements
mak
e readers’ cognition limited by the
time,
which calls for simple
but wonderful language. For example :
is in; Dirt is out(Tides) 2. Keep moving ( Anta).
Advertisement’s
function
determines
the
role
of
words
used.
The
products
are
always
described as the
best. Commendatory terms and complimentary
expressions are nothing new in
advertisements. There will never be
misers when using these words and expression.
Meanwhile
they take pains to avoid
words harming to establish interactive relations
with consumers. They
also advocate
positive attitudes towards life, encouraging
people to do significant things. It can
be comprehended that this will help to
set up a fine image of products in public. Once
people
accept what is mentioned in
advertisement, the goal is reached.
Commodity is really a wonderful and
colorful world. How to represent the world through
words in front of consumers without
reducing elegant demeanour is a problem. Rhetoric
acts as
the
problem
solver.
The
rhetorical
applications
can
enrich
language
expression
to
strengthen
language expression effect. For this
reason, some common rhetoric devices as follows
are widely
Chen 3
used to make close to readers or
audiences.
Metaphor
is
discussed
in
the
first
place.
It
is
a
most
common
rhetoric
used
in
advertisements. Metaphor can make
depicted objects vivid. Appropriate metaphor can
also stand
out products’ features or
characteristics so t
hat products can be
accepted easily. Making use of
relationship
between
ontology
and
vehicle
shows
the
characteristics
of
the
product,
rendering
language vivid,
the result of which is
people’s
interest is aroused.
An example is put
forward to
prove it
“T
he battle
plane
？
A mobile phone
actually
”
(Bird cell phone).
The metaphor is full of
originality
so
that
the
watchers
are
surprised
to
the
unique
advertising,
therefore,
it
is
kept
in
mind
unconsciously.
Besides, personification
is a figure of speech in
which
inanimate objects and abstractions
are
endowed
with
human
qualities
or
are
represented
as
possessing
human
form.
The
use
of
personification
in
advertising
endows
the
product
with
human
emotion,
and
makes
them
amicable to consumers. Herein an
English advertisement is taken for example: we are
proud of
the birthplaces of our
children, the grapes of Almaden. On our classic
various wines, you will
find the
birthplaces of our children (Almaden Wine). How
endearing the advertising is, so you
can imagine the effect. Another example
“
the most thoughtful Nikon
of all time. No one cares
more about
your image than Nikon
”
. In
the latter advertisement, the Nikon camera without
life is
personated into a thoughtful
man. This expression leaves the image that Nikon
is considerate and
careful to people.
Thirdly,
pun
is
a
play
on
words,
sometimes
on
different
senses
of
the
same
word
and
sometimes
on
the
similar
sense
or
sound
of
different
words.
Herein
is
an
example,
“
Ask
for
More
”
(More
cigarettes). It properly takes advantage of
homonym and thesaurus to make some
words possess double meaning in
specific environment.
Pun
is widely used, and is one of the
most
effective means of rhetoric that can receive
unexpected humorous effect on advertisement.
The following examples are to justify
it: 1. Obey your thirst(Sprite). 2. From Sharp
minds, come
sharp products (Sharp).This
kind of pun builds a relaxed atmosphere of humor;
the product can
be accepted by
consumers naturally.
Repetition in advertisement
in English and in Chinese refers to advertisement
doubling and
even tripling certain
words. The effect is to stand out information of
products, or to deepen the
impression
of
products
in
consumers’
brain.
The
effect
is
obviously
seen
from
the
following
Chen 4
examples,
“
Mosquito
bye
bye
bye(RADAR).
This
expression
demonstrates
the
brand
is
extraordinary
by repeating
the letter “
bye
”
.
Hi-Fi, Hi-Fun, Hi-Fashion, only from
Sony
”
“
Hi-
”
tells people that the performance of
Sony is excellent.
Hyperbole is the deliberate use of
overstatement or exaggeration to achieve emphasis.
That
is
to
say
this
technique
exaggerates
fact
a
lot,
but
exaggerating
facts
is
to
stress
facts.
In
advertising, it is not enough to say a
thing is simply
“
good
”
rather
, it shall be perfect, colossal,
spectacular, superb, gorgeous,
fantastic, and the like
.
“Big”
becomes large, giant. Some
examples
are to support the idea: 1.
The first ever
，
the last you’ll ever need
(SEIKO WATCH). 2. Good to
the last drop (MaxwellHousecoffee).Some
expressions are sure to overstate quality of
products,
but the effect absolutely is
satisfactory.
The process
of reading advertising actually is the process of
storage of information, which
involves
with
instant
memory.
Instant
memory
is
determined
by
the
length
of
information
content.
In
other
words
if
the
sentence
is
shorter,
it
is
remembered
more
quickly.
Advertising
language is
required to be understandable and easy to
memorize. In this way, the desire to buy
will
be
aroused.
The
advertising
writers
do
not
use
flowery
language,
but
unadorned
spoken
language.
Advertising
time
and
expense
is
limited,
which
also
requires
short
advertising
sentences. For example: 1. Just do it
(Nike); 2. Focus on life(Olympus). These
advertisings are
so simple, but that
does not affect the effect at all.
Imperative
sentence
appears
in
both
Chinese
advertisements
and
English
advertisements.
The purpose
of advertising is to persuade and direct people to
accept the certain standpoint or to
take measures to purchase. Imperative
sentences just have this function. So, the
frequent use of
imperative
sentence
strengthens
advertising
effect.
According
to
the
statistics
by
linguists,
a
quarter
or
more
sentences
are
imperative.
Advertising
designers
reasonably
employ
a
lot
in
advertisements. For
example: 1. Let's make things better(Philips).
time to indulge
（
Nestle
Icecream
）
.
Interrogation is to ask a
question not for the sake of getting
consumers’ answers, but to put a
point
more
clearly.
Interrogative
sentences
can
vary
from
multiple
choice
test
questions
to
rhetorical ones. It is also common to
give a suggested answer to the question, standing
out the
advertised product even more.
But more often there are no answers to the
interrogations at all.
Both Chinese
advertisements and English advertisements employ
the device of interrogation for
the
sake of emphasis. One example as follow:
Where’s the Wally with the mobile
phone?
- Nokia,
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