On Humor Translation In Fortress Besieged From The Perspective Of Functionalism

Humor has an irreplaceable function in relieving stress and tiredness, as well asenhancing interpersonal amicability, which scholars and experts have expanded on fromvarious perspectives, such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, literary criticism, etc. Italso works as manifestation of national character and a unique reflection of social reality ina certain period of the time. With enhanced cross-cultural communication, studies on thehumor translation is relatively lagged behind despite its universality.Through a review of previous studies on humor translation, the author finds that thedominating opinion over its research is the untranslatability of certain kind of linguistichumor. Some scholars even agree that translating humor from one language into anothercould be as desperate as translating poems due to varied linguistic factors as well ascultural backgrounds between the two languages involved.With the progress on translation studies and unremitting effort made by translators,German Functionalism has been applied to humor translation and its assessment.Compared with traditional translation theories, the functionalist approach opens up quite anew perspective by viewing translating as a purposeful activity that should be adapted tothe needs of the target readers. From Vermeer's point of view, one of the most importantfactors determining the purpose of a translation is the addressee, who is the intendedreceiver or audience of the target text(TT) with their culture-specific world knowledge,their expectations and their communicative needs. Every translation is directed at anintended audience, since to translate means to "produce a text in a target setting for a targetpurpose and target addressee in a target circumstance."Guided by the Functionalist theories in general and Skopostheorie in particular, theauthor holds that humor translation is a purposeful activity and the translation strategiesshould be designed to fulfill the intended skopos of humor stated in the translation brief. Inthis light, the current paper aims at discussing the applicability of Functionalism to humortranslation by a critical analysis of the translation of several rhetorical devices forhumorous expression in the well-known Chinese novel Fortress Besieged, a masterpiece ofQian Zhongshu, which is reputed for its comic exuberance and satire and has been regarded as "the most delightful and carefully wrought novel in modern Chinese literature; it isperhaps also its greatest novel." Its English version co-translated by Jeanne Kelly andNathan K.Mao is so far the first and the only one, and has evoked enthusiastic responsesince its publication. Generally, praise outweighs criticism which usually centers aroundthe transfer of humorous style. Through the investigation of these examples under theguidance of Skopostheorie and from the cultural perspective, the author finds that someseemingly unsatisfactory translations are purposed to achieve the functions of thehumorous texts.