商务广告英语的语言特点和翻译技巧

Introduction

Business English advertisements are all around us. Undoubtedly advertising has become one of the major parts of the social activities around the world and especially in Western countries. In modern age, We find ourselves surrounded by various advertisements each day. An American writer writes “We find advertisements of all kinds everywhere, for example, glittering neon signs on top of high buildings and along main streets, colorful pictures painted on buses, pamphlets sent to every house, advertisements jammed between TV programs, various advertisements glutting newspaper and radio broadcast, etc. Gradually, business advertising English differentiates its style and function from other types of English. This refers to linguistic features of style that arise from the necessity to attract and retain customers and by limitation of time and space.
When providing amusement as well as information and persuasion, advertising appeals to the emotion, to reason, to personal ambitions, pride, religious beliefs, patriotism, etc. The appeals employed by it are many and varied, but one element is indispensable, namely, the strong persuasive power lying in business advertising English. Regularly, advertising provides persuasive message. To persuade, it often appeals to the most personal of buyers’ motives. We are most likely to believe or act in the way a persuasive message requests if the materials of that message are especially appealing to our personal and unique needs and values. Persuasive messages in business English advertisements, to be successful, must accomplish the following, that is, (1) Capture our attention; (2) Arouse interest; (3) Stimulate our desires; (4) Convince us; and  (5) Get us to move, i.e. actually to take the action. How can advertisements accomplish the above objectives? It is closely associated with the linguistic features of business English advertisements and translation.

1.1  Semantic features                  
The business advertisers need to choose words with carefully so that in both denotation and connotation they are appropriate in their context. We cannot speak of advertising English if we are not dealing with its semantic features, that is, certain words in business English advertisements can be shown to certain identical information. Words can be analysed into semantic features and such a technique is useful in explaining the loadedness of business advertising English.
1. Loaded diction indicates a clear aim. In advertisements, the connotive force of wording is often exploited in persuasive language. The company the words keep reveals the objective of advertisements. Most people have been attracted to a product or ideal because of the pleasant, positive or prestigious associations conferred on it by loaded language:
(1)…make this the night you discover Night of Olay, the remarkably different beauty cream.
Night of Olay words all through the night with your skin’s own regeneration process, continually nourishing newly emerging skin. Yet for all its richness, Night of Olay as remarkably different because it’s so sheer, so greaseless. It lets your skin breathe naturally all night long. And you awake to a fresher, softer, younger look…
The advertisement for Night of Olay beauty cream doesn’t clearly point out its own merits and the evils of other products. Instead, it just puts emphasis on the difference of the beauty cream. Likewise, again and again it says that Night of Olay is remarkably different. In such an indirect style, it indicates that its product is not to be quarreled with.
2. Presupposition works wonder in business English advertisements. Presupposition is broadly defined as a semantic relation between sentences, and it is