A Chinese Translation Study Of Black Humor In Catch-22

Catch-22, one of the best-known novels of American writer Joseph Heller, is recognized as a classic of black humor literature, for it rebels the tradition of novel creation and bears distinct black humorous features in its structure, characterization and language. The black humorous feature of the language of Catch-22 manifests itself in numerous ways, among which are jocosity and irony, repetition and redundancy, and anti-logicality, causing inconvenience in translation. There are at least 8 Chinese versions of Catch-22 since late 1970s, and researches on this novel from aspects of literature and culture are also numerous. Comparatively speaking, studies on its translation are relatively rare, and even less on the translation of its language features. Therefore, this thesis is to make a study between the original and translated texts, and discuss how to reconstruct the three black humorous language features (i.e. jocosity and irony, repetition and redundancy, and anti-logicality) in translation.This thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter I discusses the translation of jocose and ironic features which are represented by the parody of classic texts, the ironic words and rhetoric, and the invention of new words. Chapter II discusses the translation of repetitious and redundant features that the author employs the following methods to represent:repetition of words, phrases or grammatical structures; spreading out a considerate number of words or phrases with semantic or grammatical similarity; the alternate reappearance of several groups of similar semantic or grammatical fragments in a circulating style. Chapter III discusses the translation of anti-logical features which include the anti-logicality in textual cohesion and the anti-logicality in semantic meaning.Through comparative analysis of the original text and its three Chinese counterparts, some translation strategies concerning the reconstruction of black humorous features are summarized in this thesis. To reproduce the jocose and ironic features in translation, the translator needs seek to reconstruct the relative language elements, i.e. the trace of parody; the images, wording, sentence style and special arrangement of words and phrases; and the formal and semantic relation between the invented new word and the original word. Language differences sometimes don't allow exact correspondence, thus the translator needs to take compensatory measures such as making annotations. To reproduce the repetitious and redundant features, the translator needs to realize their contribution to the novel's style, and endeavor to reserve the wording, word order and sentence structure of the original. To reconstruct the anti-logical features, the translator should avoid replacing the anti-logical expressions with logical ones out of habitual thinking. The proper strategy should be to maintain and highlight the wording and means of textual cohesion of the original text. In conclusion, to reproduce the black humorous features in translation, the translator can adopt the strategy of "analogical translation", which means imitating the formal features of the original text at lexical, syntactic and textual levels, thus attaining a formal and semantic similarity to the original text.