On The Translation Of Puns Through Comparison And Contrast Between Chinese And English Puns

Punning is a rhetoric device composed by the similarity in pronunciation and divergence in meaning. The translation of puns has long been considered as a "Mission Impossible". For a long period of time, no matter in China or in western countries, the traditional translation studies presented the following two opinions. One advances that except for the exact equivalence, puns are impossible to be rendered. The other opinion holds that even though there are cases that a similar pun is reproduced in the target text so as to correspond the original one, it is totally based on the ingenuity of the translator, thus there is no techniques can be imparted.However, the translatability of puns, to a great extend, reflects translators' opinions towards the standards of translation. The present paper, through sufficient examples, analyzes the application of puns in both the English and Chinese Languages, comparing and contrasting them in origin, concept, structural mode and cultural background so to discuss and provide possible solutions in the English-Chinese and Chinese English translation. In light of the different text-types of the source language, the present paper focuses on discussing the application of puns in advertisement, journalese and jokes and riddles.On the basis of reviewing the previous studies on the translation of puns, the present author offers the following five possible solutions:1) Rendering puns to puns2) Sacrificing one meaning3) Rendering both meanings4) Editorial Techniques5) OmissionThe author hopes that her painstaking efforts will prove somewhat beneficial to those who are interesting in puns and their translation and she hopes to see deeper and further studies in the future.