On Pun Translation In Advertisements From The Perspective Of Aesthetics Of Reception

Pun is a figure of speech commonly used in both English and Chinese, in which some features in sound, form or meaning of a word, phrase or sentence are purposefully made use of to produce aesthetic sense in sound, form or meaning. Because of its peculiar rhetorical and pragmatic effects, pun is widely applied in advertisements in both languages to promote sales.With ever-increasing exchanges between China and Western countries, it is of greater and greater significance to translate puns in advertisements retaining aesthetic sense and effect involved in them, thus exerting influences on target language readers' buying decision. As Chinese and English belong to two different language systems, possessing distinct pronunciations and writing forms and carrying with them divergent cultures, it is, sometimes, difficult for translators to find in the target language an equivalent of the original pun with the three aspects—its sound, form and meaning—taken into consideration. All these are tremendous obstacles to pun translation in advertisements. In practice, the rhetorical effects and aesthetic beauty contained in the original pun are totally lost, even if it is narrowly translated into the target language.Under the guidance of Aesthetics of Reception, represented by Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser, the thesis makes a relatively systematic study and exploration of pun translation in advertisements. This research tries to free itself from the bondage of traditional translation theory, which is text-oriented and provide pun translation in advertisements a new viewing angle which is receptor (translator)-centered, and purports to offer some guidance to future translations in this field.According to Aesthetics of Reception, translators are endowed with full freedom, which increases the extent to which puns of advertisements are able to be translated. They can fully perform their subjective dynamics so that aesthetic value and sense of beauty carried in pun can be reconstructed in the translated advertisements. As two important concepts of this theory, "appealing structure" and "horizon of expectation" respectively offer premise and stimulus to translators' creative translation. Some implications can be obtained from Aesthetics of Reception. First, while translators are endowed with a right to make creative translations, they are also faced with higher requirements. Second, a translator's attitude towards pun translation of advertisements will not remain unchanged all the time. To be specific, with their translation experience enriched, their efforts tend to go through a process from regarding them as untranslatable, partially translatable, to perfectly translatable. Hence, the author suggests that translators take a tolerant attitude toward multiple versions in pun translation in advertisements.No doubt, to study pun translation starting from Aesthetics of Reception has some limitations. For example, such a way of study exaggerates translators' subjective dynamics. In order to prevent a translation from becoming an adaptation because of overplay of a translator's subjective dynamics, it is suggested in the thesis that appropriate criteria, such as Mr Xu Yuanchong's "Three-beauty" principle, be imposed on translation activities to testify whether such subjective dynamics are properly displayed.Making some theoretical studies on Aesthetics of Reception and its guiding significance, this thesis also introduces several translation techniques for the purposes of effectively solving the problems existing in pun translation in advertisements.