On Principles Of Verbal Humor Translation Based On General Theory Of Verbal Humor

Verbal humor is quite common across languages but different from a language to another in some sense. This becomes an issue that is increasingly worthy of being focused on in frequent intercultural communicative activities. For full recognition of the verbal humor in intercultural communications, translation can tell scholars much about this. With features different from ordinary translation, such as entertaining effect, thought-provoking content, distinct language, the quality of verbal humor translation therefore, has a huge impact on perception of target receptors. That is why it poses a real challenge for translators, and for a long period of time, much of humor research has been dominated by a debate which centers on the translatability of humor.In order to provide reference to humor translators in specific aspects, with General Theory of Verbal Humor as theoretical base, the translation from English to Chinese is emphasized and some common-used translation principles are explored. The first thing is the discussion of the Six Knowledge Resources for generating and comprehending humor and the humor similarity measurement system in General Theory of Verbal Humor as well as their connection to translation. Then, in order to effectively demonstrate the application of the theory to translating practices, the analysis of selected instances of verbal humor with qualitative analytical method and comparative method is conducted, and to the end two major translation principles for successfully translating verbal humor are identified, namely, addition and elevation. In translating English verbal humor into Chinese, the use of addition and elevation serves to supplement relevant information and modify some diction in TT. This allows a translation to not only be generally faithful to its original humor and assist target readers to perceive source humor easily, but also to be as similar to ST as possible in the Six Knowledge Resources of General Theory of Verbal Humor, especially in the script opposition and the logical mechanism. Furthermore, this provides translators and translation researchers with useful parameters basis in the evaluation of the similarity of ST to its corresponding TT according to the humor similarity measurement system. In the last, addition and elevation reflect the translators’ effort to realize a twin humor for the target readers.This thesis is composed of five chapters. The first chapter makes an overall introduction to the purposes, questions, significance and structure of this thesis. In the second chapter, the author conducts a literature review on the research done by former scholars concerning humor translation. And the third chapter deals with the theoretical framework of the study, which demonstrates General Theory of Verbal Humor and its integration into translation. Chapter four is the body of this thesis and the author takes the examples from the Three Men in a Boat and tries to find out the commonly-used translation principles observed in verbal humor translation, while making analysis on the function and significance of principles in different situations. And Chapter five is the conclusion of the thesis.