Relevance And Verbal Humor Translation

As a pragmatic theory interpreting communication, RT (relevance theory) has been applied to many fields due to its strong explanatory power since it was put forward by Sperber and Wilson in 1986. It has now become a new theory guiding the pragmatic approach to translation. Research results both at home and abroad show that RT provides a unified theoretical framework for translation and gives an insight into the communicative nature of translation, so it can explain different kinds of translation phenomena. Verbal humor translation as a special case in translation can also have a satisfactory account from RT.Any kind of translation is a communicative activity in nature. Within the framework of RT, verbal humor translation is also an ostensive-inferential communicative activity comprising two ostensive-inferential processes and involving three texts (the original text, the schema text and the translation) and three participants (the original writer, the translator and the target readers). As an intermediary communicator, the translator should take into account both the original writer's intention and the target reader's cognitive environment, and adopt proper translation strategies to convey to the target readers the optimal relevance obtained from the original writer's ostensive communication. According to RT, the translator of verbal humor should aim to transmit the original writer's communicative intention and make the translation resemble the original interpretively. Meanwhile, guided by relevance principles, problems such as translatability and untranslatability of verbal humor, translation equivalence and so on can all be resolved.As a modern Chinese classical work, Fortress Besieged is a satirical comical novel and its comical style to a large degree is achieved through the use of the verbal humor. As the first English version of the novel, thetranslation by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K.Mao has its gains and losses, which can be easily found in its translation of verbal humor. Based on an analysis of verbal humor translation guided by RT, the author of this paper takes the English version of Fortress Besieged as a study case to analyze the verbal humor translation in it with a view to proving the explanatory power of RT on verbal humor translation.The thesis consists of an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion. The introduction explains the research background, objective, theoretical framework and the general organization of the thesis in a systematic way. Chapter One gives a survey of the studies of verbal humor, verbal humor translation, and RT in translation. Chapter Two is the main part of the thesis. It uses RT to analyze verbal humor translation and clarifies several controversial issues. It concludes that verbal humor is highly translatable, and that its translator should seek to obtain optimal relevance in translation and make the translation resemble the original in relevant aspects. It is further pointed out that direct translation and indirect translation proposed by Gutt are also applicable to verbal humor translation. Chapter Three takes the English version of Fortress Besieged as an example and uses RT to analyze the gains and losses of the verbal humor translation in it with a view to further proving the explanatory power of RT on verbal humor translation. The conclusion sums up the thesis and puts forward several problems for further research.In conclusion, guided by RT, verbal humor translation should aim at optimal relevance of the translation and try to make the SL (source language) writer's intention consistent with the TL (target language) reader's expectation, thereby to strengthen the communicative effects in a certain context.