A Study Of Translation Of Verbal Humor In Fortress Besieged From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Humor is the reflection of a nation’s language,culture and ideology,which has become an integral part of cultural communication.Humorous expression is widely used in literature and is highly appreciated for its unique artistic effects and values in communication.Growing international communication makes Chinese literature more popular among foreign readers.To enable readers worldwide deeply understand other nations’ humor,the translation of high quality and effectiveness is of great importance.Essentially,translation is a kind of verbal communication.The researching target of Relevance Theory is verbal communication,so the basic opinions and principles of Relevance Theory have strong explanatory power to translation.Relevance Theory is an interdisciplinary theory proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson.From the cognitive perspective,Relevance Theory states that verbal communication is a cognitive process and establishes relevance principles to explain the process of verbal communication.In light of previous studies of Relevance Theory,Ernst-August Gutt extends the research scope to translation.The Relevance Translation Theory regards translation as a dual ostensive-inferential process.Translators play important roles in the conveyance of information;in the pursuit of optimal relevance,they are supposed to interpret original meaning and intention correctly.Meanwhile,they should take target readers’ cognitive environment and cognitive ability into consideration to restore the contextual effects and to satisfy readers’ reading expectations.Fortress Besieged is a novel written by Qian Zhongshu and is considered a distinctive satirical novel in Chinese literature.The novel was first published in 1947 and has been translated into English,French,German,Japanese,Russian and other languages,thus has enjoyed high reputations with its wide spread around the world.In 1979,the novel was first translated into English by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K.Mao.Qian,renowned for his unique writing style,is good at using conflicts between Chinese and Western cultures to satirize people or things and to criticize social evils of the day with profound significance.His writings are characterized by humorous,meaningful,concise and incisive expressions,which are of great research values.Under the framework of Relevance Theory,the present thesis selects Fortress Besieged and its English version to make a case study on verbal humor translation.The thesis intends to explore the application of Relevance Theory to verbal humor translation in the novel,to summarize the translation approaches and skills under the guidance of Relevance theory and to analyze the instructive roles Relevance Theory plays in translation.The thesis is composed of five chapters.Chapter I is an introduction,which includes the background of the study,significance of the study,methodology and structure of the thesis.As a linguistic phenomenon that expresses humor by means of language,verbal humor has its special pragmatic effects;it is able to reflect the features of a language,to convey the information vividly and to create a relaxing and harmonious atmosphere as well.Translation is a special form of intercultural communication involving three aspects:the source language,the translator and the target language.To convey the informative intention and communicative intention and to present the original information faithfully are the aims of translation.This thesis attempts to study verbal humor translation from the perspective of Relevance Theory,and explores the specific application and guidance of Relevance Theory in verbal humor translation.Chapter II is the literature review,which summarizes the relevant studies of humor,humor translation and the English version of Fortress Besieged,and introduces the current research status.The study of humor can be traced back to the Aristotelian and Platonic age.With scholars’successive revision and improvement of studies on humor,a perfected system has been formed gradually covering fields like psychology,literature,sociology,linguistics,etc.But no agreement has been reached on the definition and classification of humor.According to studies on humor and translation,some scholars combines the two research targets together and analyze the humor translation from the perspective of linguistics,culture,translation approach,etc.,which also aim to provide the theoretical guidance for translation practice.As the case of the study,Fortress Besieged is distinguished by its humorous expressions and connotative philosophy.The studies of its English version mainly focus on translation of humor,translation of rhetoric,translation of culture-loaded words,etc.The previous studies have reviewed the overall quality of translation and have discussed the excellence and weak points in the translation,which provide a reference for the case study in this thesis.Chapter III is the theoretical framework.The basic content of Relevance Theory and the application of Relevance Theory in the field of translation are introduced in detail.Relevance Theory explains human being’s verbal communication from the perspective of cognition and regards it as an ostensive-inferential process.As a result of differences in individual external environment and cognitive ability,the cognitive environment determines the processing ability and understanding of the same information.What’s more,it is stated that a successful communication is based on the mutual manifestness of presumptions,Besides,from the cognitive and communicative perspectives,Relevance Theory brings forward the most relevance and the optimal relevance principles.Under the guidance of Relevance Theory,Relevance Translation Theory explains that translation is a dual interlingual ostensive-inferential process,in which the translator is supposed to know the cognitive environment of the target language reader and to interpret the original text properly.Through the pursuit for the optimal relevance,it is expected to achieve the functional equivalence between source language and target language to obtain the similar contextual effects and to make the author’s intention agree with the reader’s expectation.Chapter IV is the main body of the thesis.First of all,the author of the Fortress Besieged and translators of the English version are introduced and the plots of the novel are summarized,followed by the analysis of verbal humor translation in the novel under the framework of Relevance Theory.According to the characteristics and mechanism of humor,humor in Fortress Besieged is classified into three categories:universal humor,cultural humor and linguistic humor.To further discuss the ostensive-inferential process,Gutt puts forward two translation approaches:direct translation and indirect translation.This thesis subdivides them into literal translation,annotation,replacement,supplement and paraphrase,Examples are selected from the novel to analyze how the translator interprets the original text.At the last part,from the view of optimal relevance,examples are analyzed to conclude the advantages and disadvantages of the verbal humor translation in Fortress Besieged.Chapter V summarizes the thesis and concludes the theoretical and practical significance of the study from various angles.Based on the analysis,it has been proved that Relevance Theory has a strong explanatory power to verbal humor translation.As a result of the flexibility of verbal humor translation,translators should apply appropriate translation approaches to achieve the optimal relevance.If the translation can convey the correct humorous effects in the original text and realize the communicative functions,it can be regarded as a successful translation.At last,the author points out the limitations of the thesis and proposes suggestions for future studies.Based on the theoretical analysis and case study,this thesis analyzes the cognition process,translation approach and translation quality of verbal humor translation in Fortress Besieged,which further testify the guidance function of Relevance Theory to translation and is designed,hopefully,to provide references and ideas for further studies in relevant fields.In addition,the thesis attempts to provide theoretical basis for verbal humor translation in Chinese literary works in order to make foreign readers better understand the magnificence of Chinese culture and the beauty of Chinese language,and to promote the cross-cultural communication among countries and nations.