On Translation Of Humor In Pride & Prejudice

It is widely accepted that the distinctive style of an author is the best manifestation of his or her consummate creativeness, and the success of literary translation largely depends on whether the style is vividly reproduced or not. This thesis is a tentative study of how to transmigrate the humorous style of Pride & Prejudice into Chinese. While adopting equivalent effect translation theory put forward by Jin Di as a guiding principle, it also seeks theoretical help from a branch of linguistics-literary stylistics, which proves to be highly enlightening in the practice of fictional translation.Following a general introduction in chapter 1, Chapter 2 makes a brief survey on the theories to be involved in the study. Literary stylistics is defined as a discipline mediating between literary criticism and linguistics. The purpose of a stylistician is to explicate how the writer's verbal manipulation produces or contributes to the total meaning of the work, based on a linguistic knowledge of the workings of language. It is on account of its penetrating linguistic observations and insights that stylistic analysis makes significant contribution to the translation of literary discourse. Chapter 3 carries out an investigation on the features of Jane Austen's humor, focusing on the workings of stylistic devices in the production of the humorous effect. Based on that, in Chapter 4, literary stylistics is applied as an effective tool for detecting problems occurring in style translation, as well as a convincing remedy for their solutions. From the evidence of both the negative and the positive renderings presented in Chapter 4, it is clear that an adequate analysis of the functions of stylistic devices is crucial to the avoidance of deceptive equivalence and the production of equivalent effect translation. Chapter 5 summarizes the whole study, and reiterates the conclusion that applying stylistic analysis can help translators to achieve stylistic equivalence. Limitations of the thesis are also pointed out, together with suggestions for further research efforts.