Abstract With the booming market economy, advertisements are ubiquitous in modern society. In order to disseminate information of a certain product or service and attract customers’ attention in a limited time and space, advertisers cudgel their brains to apply any language devices that are effective to advertising slogans, among which puns are a most favored one. From the perspective of Relevance Theory, this paper studies the application of puns in English advertisements and analyzes the process how the audience understand puns in advertisements. What’s more important and creative in this paper is to explore the scientific ways to translate puns in English advertisements from four strategies: preservation, creation, compensation and explication, which may blaze a new trail in the translation of puns in English advertisements.61394

Key words: advertisement; pun; Relevance Theory; translation strategies

摘要随着市场经济的发展，广告在当今社会随处可见。为了在有限的时间和空间里最大限度地传递商品或服务信息并且吸引顾客眼球，广告商们绞尽心思，越发注重运用各种语言策略来设计广告语，其中双关是最受青睐的手段之一。本文从关联理论视角，研究了双关语在广告中的应用，分析受众理解广告中双关语的过程，并创造性地从保留、再造、补偿以及解释说明等翻译策略出发,探讨广告中双关语的翻译方法，为广告英语中双关语的翻译开辟了新的视角。

毕业论文关键词：广告；双关；关联理论；翻译策略

 Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. Introduction of Relevance Theory 3

3.1 Ostensive-inferential Communication 5

3.2 Optimal Relevance 6

4. Puns in Advertisements 7

4.1 Definition of Puns 7

4.2 Classification of Puns in Advertisements 8

4.3 Functions of Puns in English Advertisements 10

5. Translation strategies of Puns in English Advertisements from Relevance Theory 11

5.1 Relevance Theory Approach to Pun Translation 11

5.2 Some strategies for the Translation of Puns in English Advertisements 13

6. Conclusion 16

Works Cited 17

1. Introduction 

With the booming international economy and the increasingly frequent exchanges between countries, advertisements have already penetrated into every pore of our society and daily life. Advertisements begin to flourish as an important production of the modern economy and society amid the advancement of the reform and opening up to the outside world, China’s admission into various economic international organizations and the development of information technology. 

Advertising can be seen as a special communication behavior, which intends to, within limited time and space, impress and persuade customers to buy products. Under the current condition, the significance of translation of English advertisements becomes prominent. Thus, advertisers all cudgel their brains to employ every strategy possible to imbue advertisements with novelty and amusement so as to contend for customers” attention. 

And punning is one of the most commonly used rhetorical devices in designing advertisements. As a matter of fact, puns belong to ambiguity to a certain degree. Featuring fuzziness and double context, the illocutionary meaning an advertisement intends to convey demands extra efforts made by targeting customers. Puns generate double meanings in one sentence: surface meaning and implied meaning. The associative meaning of puns is able to better promote selling or service, which makes it become increasingly popular in English advertisements. Owing to the fact that advertisements are designed to be as much concise and informative as possible, puns are favored a lot by advertisers for it is an economical form that can produce tremendous information with ingenious effects. This unique language charm exactly satisfies the requirements of designing advertisements in every way. Traditional researches on puns carried out by numerous scholars have not delved deeply into translation of puns in English advertisements. Further study on this problem is necessary.