A Study on Usage and Translation Strategies of Puns in English Commercial Advertisement

Abstract

Pun, a concise way of expressing humor and wit, is especially favored by advertisers to enhance the charm of language. Puns have long been regarded as “untranslatable” due to linguistic and cultural differences between two different languages. However, the author of this paper considers the translatability of puns to some extent. Although human may be lost in translation, translators can make various compensations to achieve similar effects in order to achieve the best translation of text. Combined with the analysis of examples, this paper provides a discussion on the classification of puns in English advertising. The author provides various ways to form puns in advertisement and proposes some suggestion for English commercial advertisement translation.