On Pun Translation Of Two Versions Of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

Pun is a play on words, which is considered most challenging in the field oftranslation, because it is almost impossible to find exact pun equivalence in the targetlanguage. To make a pun is to exploit double meanings of a word for creating humorouseffects.Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the most notable book of the19thcentury, hasgained lasting popularity among adults as well as children in the world since it is firstpublished by Lewis Carroll who is considered as the “Father of Children’s Literature” in1865. The tale still enchants new generations of young and older readers alike, even thoughmore than one century has elapsed. Among many other reasons, the endurance of Carroll’stale may be explained by his particular work on language games that it produces, therebycreating a remarkable literary work. Lewis Carroll uses quantitative puns in the book,which have been considered as untranslatable for a long period of time. However, ZhaoYuanren successfully translated it into Chinese, whose version has also been regarded asthe best rendering for a long time. Since then, this book has been retranslated again andagain; however, two trends appeared in the translation of this book. Most of the translatorsprefer to translate it into a book for child readers; but, other translators tend to render it intoa literature book for adult readers. Therefore, the author of this thesis selects two Chineseversions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and analyzes them from the perspective ofReception Theory. The two Chinese versions chosen are Zhao Yuanren’s version which ispublished in1922for child readers and Zhang Hua’s version which is published in2010for adult readers.The characteristics of target readers’ horizon of expectation are different as time goesby. The author analyzes Zhao Yuanren’s and Zhang Hua’s versions, aiming to study theefforts these two translators made to make their pun translation satisfy their target readers’ horizon of expectation. On the whole, both the two translators adopted proper translationstrategies to cater for their target readers’ horizon of expectations.The whole thesis contains five chapters. The first chapter introduces the purpose,significance and organization of the thesis. Chapter two discusses the current research onpuns’ translation at home and abroad as well as Lewis Carroll and his famous work Alice’sAdventures in Wonderland. Chapter three shows the two basic ideas of Reception Theoryand discusses the feasibility of Reception Theory as the framework of this study. Chapterfour analyzes the translation strategies used by the two translators in their own renderingsfrom the perspective of Reception Theory. The last chapter is the conclusion part of thisthesis.Needless to say, the thesis has its defects that require improvement by experts andscholars.