Volume 2, Issue 2 (Special Issue on Translation, Society and Culture) , September 2014, , Pages 57-67
Abstract
Rhetorical figures, which are frequently applied in advertisements, can add literary flavor to the texts, gratify audiences’ aesthetic needs, and deepen their impression. In advertisement translation, it is very common that the rhetorical figures applied in the original text are replaced with new ...
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Rhetorical figures, which are frequently applied in advertisements, can add literary flavor to the texts, gratify audiences’ aesthetic needs, and deepen their impression. In advertisement translation, it is very common that the rhetorical figures applied in the original text are replaced with new ones in the translation. This research focuses on rhetorical figures’ function of enhancing audiences’ memory and discusses the realization of this function in translation. The psychological studies on human needs are referred to in the analyses, especially aesthetic needs, for the use of rhetorical figures provides audiences with aesthetic pleasure and gratifying their aesthetic needs involves their emotion and enhances their memorization. To have aesthetic needs is universal across cultures; however, the ways to satisfy such needs may vary due to linguistic and cultural differences. The flexible treatment of rhetorical figures in advertisement translation mirrors such differences in terms of needs gratification, and investigation in this regard can reveal the linguistic and cultural nuances and provide translators with practical guidance.
This research aimed to review the use of second-person reference in advertisement translation, work out the general rules, and provide guidance to translators. Using second-person reference is common in the advertising discourse. Addressing audiences directly involves their attention and in this way ...
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This research aimed to review the use of second-person reference in advertisement translation, work out the general rules, and provide guidance to translators. Using second-person reference is common in the advertising discourse. Addressing audiences directly involves their attention and in this way enhances their memorization of the advertised message. Second-person reference can be realized via second-person pronouns and the imperative tone. In this study, we investigated the differences between Chinese and English advertising texts. The statistics based on the corpus demonstrated a tendency of using second-person pronouns in the English texts and using imperatives or the implicit way of second-person reference in the Chinese texts. Analyses were provided as to the adjustment made in advertisement translation, referring to the basic human needs and communicative principles.