On The Translation Of English And Chinese Commercial Advertisements From The Perspective Of Markedness Theory

This thesis aims to explore strategies of translation of English and Chinese commercial advertisements through analyses on the marked features exhibited by advertisements in the two languages from the perspective of Markedness Theory. After substantial researches on Markedness Theory and commercial advertisements, a natural and inherent connection between them is finally found. Advertising language is a kind of public language with artificial markedness, which takes on its own features to differentiate from commonly-used public language to which people are insensitive due to its regularity and conventionalization. Markedness purposely formed and artificially made in advertisements aims to attract people's attention, arouse their interest, cultivate the desire, impress their memory and induce them to take purchasing actions.A word, a phrase, a sentence structure, or even a passage is used with no specialties in commonly-used public language, but they become marked and make part of advertising language after a purposely arrangement and artificial design by advertising designers, which is also the process of markedness developed, for example, a monosyllabic verb wipe is very common and unmarked in daily life, but it is special and marked when used with another three wipes to form a special figure of speech repetition; or an ordinary passage is often designed into a tree-shaped or heart-shaped one to form markedness.With a detailed comparative analysis on markedness in both English and Chinese advertisements, some interesting phenomena are found. Although English and Chinese are from different language families, they share many similarities in markedness in their advertisements. Monosyllabic verbs, adjectives, adverbials, imperative, interrogative or irregularly-used elliptical sentences together with some figures of speech such as simile, personification, hyperbole, repetition, pun, parody, are all widely used to form markedness to attract people's attention in both English and Chinese commercial advertisements. And expectably, there exist many disparities in the process of developing markedness due to the differences in the two languages themselves and cultures. Designers take advantage of the flexible and dynamic changes in sound and form of the alphabetic language—English to form markedness, so there appears alliteration, assonance, consonance, paregmenon, coined words, shortened words, and disjunctive sentences in English advertisements to feast people's eyes and ears, which are difficult to find counterparts in Chinese advertisements. In Chinese, designers feel no frustration to make markedness based on characters. Consonance and reduplicative sound words help enhance musicality and rhythm while a particular figure of speech such as antithesis, anadiplosis, palindrome and acrostic contributes to originality and novelty of advertisements. Furthermore, mixed languages are also introduced to form markedness in Chinese advertisements to satisfy people's foreitnizational psychology and stimulate their interest. A meticulous recognization and analysis of the markedness in English and Chinese advertisements is of great significance and importance in translation of advertisements in the two languages.After a great many analyses on the collected English and Chinese commercial advertisements with given translation texts from the perspective of the Markedness Theory, there draws a conclusion that markedness developed in the same way such as imperative sentences, interrogative sentences, simile, personification, or repetition, can be converted directly to the other language and makedness language-specific and culture-based has to be translated in a felicitous and apposite circumbendibus—1. Markedness created by alliteration, assonance, consonance, paregmenon, coined words, shortened words, or disjunctive sentences in English advertisements can be artfully converted into markedness formed by assonance, reduplicative sound words, four-character words, antithesis, anadiplosis, palindrome, acrostic, mixed language in Chinese advertisements and vise versa; 2. Markedness made by novel changes on well-known idioms, proverbs, sayings, songs, poems, which quite often appear in both English and Chinese advertisements, can be converted into markedness developed by similar fixed but changed expressions in the other language, if possible; otherwise, choose a way introduced in 1 and vise verse; 3. Markedness formed by culture shock should be converted adaptably, otherwise it is more likely to cause bitter refusal by foreign consumers.Despite limitation in the literature read, the advertisements collected, and the proficiency of English and Chinese the author has gained, she still sincerely hopes that the study could be of some help and illumination to those engaged in advertising translation.