On Chinese Humorous Texts And Their Translation In Si Shi Yi Pao From The Perspective Of The General Theory Of Verbal Humor

Humor is commonplace in our daily life, which has a special pragmatic effect as a linguistic phenomenon. Many scholars have researched humor from different perspectives, such as philosophy, psychology, linguistics and sociology. The General Theory of Verbal Humor(GTVH) proposed by Attardo has been the most influential theory related with humor up to now. The GTVH proposes that humorous texts incorporate six KRs or six parameters( LA, NS, TA, SI, LM and SO) and puts forward that the six parameters rank in a hierarchy with SO ranking the top, being the most important one.Based on the GTVH, this research takes the humorous texts from Mo Yan’s novel Si Shi Yi Pao and the translated version POW! as data by establishing a Chinese-English bilingual parallel database, aiming at analyzing the characteristics of the Chinese verbal humor in Si Shi Yi Pao, discussing the mechanism of Chinese humorous texts and specifically exploring the translation methods of three types of humor in POW! as well as their translatability. This research is expected to inspire the future researches on verbal humor and humor translation and studies based on the theory of the GTVH.The research findings show that conceptual humor can be best translated with the six KRs unchanged. The change of six parameters, especially the disappearance of SO is the reason why culture humor and wordplay humor are always difficult to be translated. Although different kinds of humor differ in translatability inherently, the translation methods taken is also an important element for successfully transferring humorous effects from the source language. All in all, no matter what kind of translation method is adopted, the six parameters should be reserved in the target texts to the largest extent, especially the parameter of SO.