Abstract: Under the background of globalization, advertisement plays an increasingly significant role in people’s daily lives and they are seen everywhere. It cannot be denied that advertisements have gradually and silently seeped into every area of people’s modern lives. As a commercial language, advertisements express complicated meanings by using simple words or phrases and rhetorical devices are commonly used in them, such as pun, simile, metaphor, repetition, hyperbole, parallelism, personification, metonymy, alliteration and so on. This thesis aims to study the rhetorical devices in English advertisements. In this thesis, the author will analyze seven rhetorical devices with plenty of cases. On the basis, different translation strategies will be concluded and analyzed: transliteration, literal translation and free translation. Knowing the rhetorical devices and translation methods in English advertisements, people may have much clearer idea about how to understand and translate advertisements appropriately

Key words: English advertisements; rhetorical devices; translation

CONTENTS

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction1

2. Rhetorical Devices and Their Examples..2

2.1 Simile

2.2 Metaphor

2.3 Repetition

2.4 Pun

2.5 Hyperbole

2.6 Parallelism

2.7 Personification

3. Translation Strategies in English Advertisements.8

3.1 Transliteration

3.2 Literal Translation

3.3 Free Translation

4. Conclusion10

Bibliography.11

Acknowledgements12