Pun can not only make language expressive, humorous, but also deepen the sentiment, and give people a deep impression. Writing in this art requires more skill than any other form of writing. It should use the principle of sales to write down the elegance, vivid and interesting words so that advertisements can have special contagious power, which can arouse the reader's attention in an instant and stimulate their purchasing desires to ultimately promote the purchase behavior. Therefore, the use of proper language in advertising will make the advertising language power far beyond the advertising itself.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the applications and advantages of the pun in English advertisement in terms of puns classification and translation strategy. Researching on pun in English, it has been noticed that there are many categories of puns in different levels, qualifying it with many characteristics and features. Thus, it has been considered “untranslatable” for a long time due to the linguistic and cultural pergences between English and Chinese. However, as far as the author is concerned, pun can be translated. Although some meanings that the source language tries to convey may be lost in the process of translation, translators can use various ways and adjustment to achieve a similar effect. Therefore, the translation theory and strategies that puns should follow in advertisements translation will be explored in this thesis.

2 Analysis of the Application of Puns in English Advertisement

Since puns play an very crucial role in modern advertisement, this part will discuss some basic information about puns and its application in English advertisement, including the definition, features, functions, classifications and applications.

2.1 Definition of Puns

In English rhetoric, the definition of pun is quite different. The first and easiest one is that Pun refers to the use of the polysemy and homophone of words in certain linguistic environment. It is intended to make sentences have dual meanings. Pun can not only make language expressive, humorous, but also to deepen the sentiment, and give people a deep impression.

According to the second definition from Oxford English Dictionary, pun is to use one word to imply two or more meanings or produce different associations, or use two or more words with the same or similar pronunciation but different meanings to produce a humorous effect.

Pun can also be defined as a humorous use of words, which uses one word to imply different meanings or different associations. It is a kind of word game in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

According to Chinese Ci Hai, pun is defined as one of the figures of speech use the homonym or synonymous relationship in the language, to make a sentence involving two things. Modern Chinese Dictionary defines pun as a kind of meaning that another meaning is hidden.

From the above definitions, it is easily to understand that pun means using words homophonic or polysemy to make a sentence have two meanings simultaneously in a specific language environment. It is very similar to what people usually say in puns that is two birds with one stone, which means that another meaning is intended in here. It can be seen that the meaning on the surface of the pun is not the true intention of a speaker or writer, and the true meaning of pun is hidden level.

2.2 Features of Puns

In Chinese and English, puns always are used widely as a rhetorical device because of its unique features. So in this part, the author will introduce two kinds of features about puns.

The first and most obvious feature is polysemy which means a word can have or express two or more meanings rather than only one kind. For example, both homophonic puns and semantic puns deal with the two meanings of the outside and the inside. The meanings not directly expressed are the meanings that the communicators want to convey. They need not to be revealed, but need to make people obtain and find out so that they cannot have misunderstanding or ambiguity.