【校园汉语阅读六】广告 Advertisement

让我们把重点放到广告领域。我们都知道广告是什么。广告实质是一则商品销售信息。在发广告之前,有个重要的前提条件,那就是消费品的大量供应,即有东西要卖。如果一处的商品供不应求,那就没有必要做广告。

 

最早的广告形式可以追溯到几百年前,商店门口挂着简单的招牌告诉这是家面包店,肉店或者你拥有什么。后来,随着印刷业的出现,广告量骤增.咖啡,茶叶,巧克力广告出现在报纸,期刊杂志和建筑物外。

 

在美国殖民地,广告和传播媒体,像报纸,小册子成为销售商品和服务的主要影响因素。用现代标准衡量,这些早期广告太小而且被抑制,不像今天的广告那么大而显眼,用大篇幅刊载引人注意。仍然有些广告被刊登到报纸的首页很可能是因为新闻都是一些来自遥远的欧洲不能令人耳目一新的报道,而广告更具时效性和地方性。

 

广告确实是这样,成为工业革命时期商业活动的重要组成部分。突然之间,有很多商品供销售。正如我们刚才所说,那是广告的驱动力。人们的注意力要被吸引到新产品上。让我们来看看那时候的一些广告。

 

生词摘录:

1. 本质上 副词 essentially

2. 先决条件 名词 precondition

3. 面包店 名词 bakery

4. 屠户 名词 butcher

5. 期刊 名词 periodical

6. 小册子 名词 pamphlet

7. 被抑制的 形容词 subdued

8. 大而显眼的,引人注目的 形容词 splashy

 

英文译文

Let's turn our focus now to advertising. We all know what an advertisement is. It's essentially a message that announces something for sale. Now there's an important precondition that must exist before you have advertising, and that's a large supply of consumer goods, that is, things to sell. You see, when the demand for a product is greater than the supply, there is no need to advertise.

 

Now the earliest forms of advertising going back many hundreds of years with a simple sign over shop doors that let you know whether the shop was a bakery, a butcher shop or what you have. Then, with the advent of the printing press, advertising increased substantially. Ads for products like coffee, tea and chocolate appeared in newspapers and other periodicals, as well as on the sides of buildings.

 

In the American colonies, advertising and communications media-like newspapers and pamphlets became a major factor in marketing goods and services. By modern standards, these early advertisements were quite small and subdued, not as splashy as the full page spreads of today. Still some of them appeared on the front pages of newspapers probably because the news often consisted of less updated reports from distant Europe, while the ads were current and local.

 

The effectiveness of advertising at its introduction led to it becoming an essential part of doing business during the industrial revolution. Suddenly there was a much greater supply of things to sell. And as we said earlier, that is the driving force behind advertising. People's attention had to be drawn to the new product. Let's take a look at some of the advertisements from that time.