Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: Being a driving force in world economy, advertising is playing an increasingly important role. The charm of advertisements consists in novel language and various rhetorical devices. Pun is one of the most widely used rhetorical devices, which is a witticism involving the use of a word with more than one meaning, or of words having the same or nearly the same sound but different meanings. Like advertisements, the translation of advertisements should also catch the readers’ attention. Nida’s functional equivalence theory emphasizes the correspondence of meaning and the similarity of function, which is of great value to the study of pun translation in English advertising. Therefore, this thesis is based on Nida’s functional equivalence theory and aims to explore the translation strategies of puns, puts forward five strategies, namely, literal translation, free translation, imitation, respective translation and compensation.

Key words: advertising; pun; translation; functional equivalence theory

摘要：作为推动世界经济发展的媒介，广告发挥着越来越重要的作用。广告的魅力在于新颖的语言及丰富的修辞手法。双关就是运用最为广泛的修辞之一，是一种利用词的多义和同音的条件，有意使语句具有双重意义的修辞。同广告一样，广告英语中双关语的翻译也要能吸引读者。奈达的功能对等理论以“读者反应论”为中心，强调“语义相符，功能相似”，对于英文广告中双关语的翻译有重大价值。因此本文在奈达功能对等理论的指导下探讨广告英语中双关语的翻译策略，主要有五种，即：直译法，意译法，仿译法，分译法和补译法。

关键词：广告；双关；翻译；功能对等理论

1.    Introduction
With the development of Chinese economy, more and more Chinese products are exposed to foreign countries, and meanwhile, countless foreign goods and services are flooding into Chinese market. Together with the economic boom is a rapid development of advertising industry.
Advertising translation is quite different from translation of literary works because of the special functions and language features of advertising. English advertising displays its original language in lexical, syntactic and rhetorical features. Amazed and amused by the wit and wisdom of puns, the present author focuses on punning and its translation strategies in English advertising.
Pun is frequently used in English advertising to attract customers’ eyes and hold their attention due to its amusing and aesthetic effects. Pun translation has its laws and needs a systematic study. Nida’s functional equivalence theory offers a good solution to translate puns in English advertising, because it puts emphasis on readers’ responses and advertising aims to produce expected responses from readers. In the light of functional equivalence theory, the present author suggests that correspondence in meaning and similarity in function should be the basic criteria for the translation of puns in English Advertising.