广告英语的语言特点及翻译策略(2)
Ⅱ. Definition of Advertisement and Its Function
Advertising is the non personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media. With the development of economy, we can see advertising everywhere such as radio, TV, newspaper, billboards buildings, and even when we on the metro or on the street. It is no exaggeration to say that there are few places in the public that are not permeated with advertisements. Advertisements comprise thirty percent of the material aired on television, and many of us will view more than two million commercials in our lifetimes. The A. C. Nielson Company reports that, by the age of sixty-five, the average U.S. citizen have spent nine years of his or her life watching television—twenty-eight hours a week, two months a year. And in one year, the average youth will spend nearly twice as many hours in front of the tube (fifteen hundred hours) as he or she spends at school (nine hundred hours). We may turn the box off eventually, but the advertisements remain. We are surrounded by them: they cover billboards, cereal boxes, food wrappers, bathroom stalls, tee shirts, and tennis shoes. In short, advertisements inform every aspect of our lives. Yet we often give them very little thought. We may make aesthetic judgments about them (e.g., “That commercial was funny” or “That commercial was stupid”) or view them as innocent means to purchase ends, but we rarely acknowledge them as messages that require critical attention.
Advertisement is a way to promote the products. It can reach everywhere and everyone can see it, and it does not need the seller and buyer to get together. The consumers can get message from the advertisement, which contains the product information, always short and easy to remember. And it also comes from our daily life whose words easy to be seen. For example: My goodness! My Guinness(我的天！我的健力士), Good to the Last drop(Maxwell), That is my way(la saunda), “Wear the world”(国际时尚，戴在我手)（珠宝广告）. Advertising makes the brand well known.
We know Intel Pentium(英特尔奔腾), Philips(飞利浦电器), Time(时代杂志), Guinness(健力士), Colgate(高露洁), Lipton(立顿),Coca-cola(可口可乐), and so on. Why we know these brands? Because they have made advertisements and we know their advertisements very well. When we come to the market, we may turn to these brands. So advertisements help these companies create wealth and make the world know them. I do not think that every advertisement can appeal people but a good advertisement can appeal people, so how to translate a good advertisement is very important.
Advertisements, however, do more than entertain and sell more than just products. They suggest standards of normalcy, of coolness, of sexiness, of happiness, and so on—standards that shape the way that we view and interpret the world. They also serve the profit-driven interests of the corporations that create them. As cultural critic Naomi Klein explains, “Quite simply, every company with a powerful brand is attempting to develop a relationship with consumers that resonates so completely with their sense of self that they will aspire, or at least consent, to be serfs under these feudal brand lords”. In other words, advertisements are hardly innocent means to purchase ends and，more often than not, hardly true reflections of our senses of self. Instead, they are a powerful force in creating our senses of self. Therefore, advertisements do require a critical eye.
Ⅲ. Characteristics of Advertising English Language
3.1. Phonological Features of Advertising
Alliteration is the use of words that begin with the same sound in order to make a special communicative effect. Usually they sound pleasant because of the clever choice of the word by the advertiser. In addition to this, the repetition of the beginning sound emphasizes what the advertisement wants to express. For example:
上一篇：广告英语的语用策略分析
下一篇：英语课堂上的中国文化渗透