The Exploration Of Chinese Pun And Its Translation

The earliest employment of puns in literary works dates as far back as 2000 years ago. They are still in frequent use in modern literary works such as novels, poems, speeches, prose, etc. Pun, one of traditional figures of speech, exists in almost all languages in the world. As a kind of language phenomenon, pun is deep-rooted in language and culture. Since different languages bear different styles and expressive means, the Chinese pun, under the influences of its language, culture etc., bears the distinct characteristics which are different from those of the English pun. Chinese pun enjoys a long history. Hence its content and form get the continuous development. The application scope of Chinese pun is also becoming wider and wider. The author dissects Chinese pun from its definition, application scope, classification and the typical examples in different periods of Chinese history so that the thesis is beneficial to people's full understanding of Chinese pun.The translation of puns is usually thought of as difficult or impossible. The author discusses the translatability of puns from multiple aspects and introduces several translation methods of domestic and foreign scholars. The representative of pun translation study abroad is Delabastita who has systematically drawn a conclusion of pun translation. On the basis of his conclusion, the author analyzes the applicability of his translation methods through the qualitative and quantitative study on the collected examples in order to find out some laws of pun translation from the perspective of Chinese pun's classification and the corresponding translation techniques.This thesis is beneficial to the understanding of the characteristics of Chinese pun and the laws of pun translation from Chinese into English. And it is helpful to people's full understanding and flexible application of pun, people's decoding appreciation of literary works, and translation of translators.