Characteristics of Japanese Public Service Announcements and Their Chinese Translation

Abstract

Public service advertising is a cultural narrative that focuses on social issues and serves the public interest. Public advertisements are cultural objects that focus on social issues and serve the public interest. Advertising language variation is a special linguistic phenomenon, fully reflecting the special linguistic purpose and intention of the advertiser’s creator. This paper will take the example of Japanese public service advertisements as an entry point to analyse the linguistic features of Japanese public service advertisements and the analysis of the thematic content of the advertisements, as well as to study the translation methods of Japanese public service advertisements. Through reading a lot of literature and conducting research, we finally found that Japan’s public service announcements have developed for a long time and are unique in terms of expression, theme, and rhyme, which are inextricably related to Japan’s economic, cultural, and political background. At the same time, Japanese PSAs also have their limitations. By translating Japanese PSAs into Chinese and summarising their translation methods, we can take the best and discard the worst.