Translation And Relevance: Case Study Of Humor Translation In Fortress Besieged

Humor translation has always been seen as a paradigm case of untranslatability.When it comes to translating humor, the translator often feels desperate as that oftranslating poetry. The untranslatability of humor is generally related to cultural andlinguistic aspects. More and more research has been carried out on humor study, but thaton humor translation is still inadequate. Therefore, it’s of great significance to relate withhumor and translation and make further study on humor translation.The thesis strives to explore humor translation within the theoretical framework ofrelevance theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson and relevance-theoretic approach totranslation by Gutt. First, humor in the case study is put into three different categories:unrestricted humor, humor restricted by cultural factors, and humor restricted bylinguistic features. Second, the translation of these three kinds of humor will beevaluated within the theoretical framework of relevance theory and relevance-theoreticapproach to translation so as to find out whether the principle of relevance has beenfollowed in the translation. Finally, the thesis reaches the conclusion that relevancetheory is effective in explaining humor translation, and the translators of FortressBesieged have followed the principle of relevance in most cases.