On Translating Verbal Humor In Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

The novel Hong Lou Meng is a gorgeous flower in the garden of classic Chinese literature. The profundity of its language has been applauded since its birth. Since the publication of its two English translations, translators and scholars have shown undiminished enthusiasm for researches on the translation of this novel. Yet curiously, systematic translatological investigations into verbal humor translation in Hong Lou Meng are few. Hence to arouse scholars'attention to this interesting and valuable subject, the thesis examines verbal humor translation in this novel from the perspective of relevance theory, in which the author attempts to propose the eligible translating principle and strategies in line with relevance theory and hopes these translating approaches may shed light on verbal humor translation in literature in general.Humor is a kind of language style. The understanding of a verbal humor and its humorous effect heavily relies on the shared background knowledge between the communicator and the receptor, i.e. the mutually shared context. The most ideal translation of verbal humor is expected to convey the content of the humor and to preserve the humorous effect as well. However, there are various kinds of verbal humors in Hong Lou Meng, each category depends on different type of context. Additionally, most of them are highly linguistically and culturally bound. So the complexity of humor translation brings a lot of trouble to the translator.Relevance theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson is a pragmatic linguistic theory accounting for human communication and cognition. It characterizes verbal communication as an ostensive-inferential process, and holds that both parties of communication carry out the communication following the principle of relevance—"every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance". It demonstrates a great interpretive power in explaining communicative processes like translation, especially verbal humors translation.Under the guidance of relevance theory, the thesis author suggests that verbal humor translation in Hong Lou Meng should observe the principle of restoring indirect relevance, i.e. the translator should reproduce humor in the way in which the original humor achieves relevance, which is an indirect relevance, so as to preserve both the meaning and the humorous effect. Under the guidance of this principle, the translator can choose proper strategies according to different contexts that certain verbal humors depend on. By comparing Yang Xianyi and David Hawkes'renderings, the author generalizes the following feasible strategies for verbal humors translation:Literal translation can be applied to translating those verbal humors that can be thoroughly interpreted with the help of their co-text. As for other linguistically and culturally embedded humor, due to the absence of necessary contextual assumptions in the target reader's cognitive context, readers can hardly achieve indirect relevance with the original humor. On this occasion, the translator needs to make necessary contextual adjustments to the original humor so as to ensure the target reader the restoration of indirect relevance. Contexual adjustments can be sorted into two kinds: direct contextual compensation and indirect contextual compensation. The former refers to adding the absent contextual information directly to the literal translation of the original humor, which can be fulfilled by annotation and amplification. And the latter refers to making modifications or alterations to the original humor so as to reproduce the humor in the target language in the way that is familiar to the target reader, which includes strategies like functional equivalence, free translation and substitution of the original humor. Besides, the author notices that some of the verbal humors in the novel can not be translated ideally, and the translator can only maintain the meaning or the humorous effect. As for this type of humor, the author suggests that translators can set their priority in translation according to the primary function of each humor in literary texts.