| As a result of the economic and cultural globalization, international advertising,as a cross-cultural communicative activity, plays an important role in cross-borderexchanges. Pun, a rhetorical device to express humor and wit, is a favourite techniquefor advertisers as it possesses unique linguistic features and rich cultural implication.The translation of advertising pun draws much attention from scholars and translatorsin China and abroad. Guided by Adaptation Theory, this thesis is intended for thepragmatic study on translation of puns in advertising texts.The rationale of the study is Adaptation Theory advanced by Verschueren. Inaccordance with the theory, language use including translation is a continuous processof making linguistic choices with various degree of salience, for language-internal andlanguage-external reasons. The reason why translators can make linguistic choices intranslation process is due to the fact that language possesses three features, i.e.,variability, negotiability and adaptability. Among them, adaptability is the core oflanguage use. The linguistic choices made by translator can be investigated from fourangles: contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability,dynamics of adaptability and salience of adaptation process.By analyzing abundant examples of advertising pun in Chinese or English, thisthesis explores how the translators adapt their translations to linguistic reality fromthree aspects: code and style, sound structure and diction; then it also discusses howthe translators adapt their translations to extra-linguistic conventions frompsychological activities and social facts. Furthermore, the author points out thatadvertising pun translation is in fact a continuous process of making choices inlanguage forms and translating strategies to satisfy commercial needs of advertisersby making adaptation to the above elements.The thesis provides a new and comprehensive perspective on the translation ofpuns in advertisements within the theoretical framework of Adaptation Theory. In addition, it sheds light on translators in practice of pun translation in advertisements. |
