On E-C Translating Strategy Of Humorous Language

Translation of humorous language has been regarded despairing as a result of the differences in logics, rhetoric and culture of source and target languages. This paper starts from brief expositions on humor tradition in China and the West, to the logical, rhetorical and cultural elements involved in humorous language, and to a classification of the transferable and untransferrable categories among these elements. By a combined consideration of related theories of readership acceptance, speech act in pragmatics and functional translation, recontextualization is put forward with a view to carrying the untranslatable to the target readers. A shake-off of the source context and a TT context reconstruction as close as possible to the original proposition and humoring pattern in ST produce a translation capable of provoking analogous association among target audience. It emerges as a fruit of arduous brain-cudgel and consequent sudden enlightenment and therefore an outcome of inspirational thinking. The applicability of recontextualization, a guideline in translating language of humor, serves as a successful example to solving old problems from a new standing point.