On The English Translation Of Verbal Humor

Language is one of the most important tools of communication and is a unique human skill. If language is transformed into a metaphor for delicacy, humor must be the indispensable condiment in that delicacy. Therefore, a research on verbal humor not only helps us look for deep insight into verbal humor but also helps us enrich language expressions. So far the researches on verbal humor have been pushed farther and farther from various perspectives. Linguistics, as one of subjects dealing with language, naturally becomes one branch of subjects which are conducting researches on verbal humor.Based on Attardo and Raskin's General theory of Verbal Humor and its Extended Theory, this research aims to study the characteristics as well as translation methods of verbal humor in Xu Sanguan Mai Xue Ji and its English version by establishing its Chinese-English bilingual parallel database which can help us make a comparison between Chinese verbal humor and English verbal humor. Meanwhile, through quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data, this research tries to figure out how humor occurs and how to translate humor, hoping that this research can set a foundation for the further researches on verbal humor and humor translation.We can summarize the major findings of this research as follows:?The generation of Chinese verbal humor relies on the application of rhetorical devices which can be regarded as formation mechanism of Narrative Strategy (NS). And black humor in this database is embedded in three major rhetorical devices:simile, hyperbole and irony. ? By the analysis on the data, it is found that literal translation is the most widely used translation method, which totally takes up 62.5%. In addition, paraphrase, combination, annotation, substitution and omission only take up a small proportion. ? There are three patterns for transferring rhetorical devices which can be regarded as a special pattern of manifestation of Narrative Strategy (NS), named homogenous conversion mode, heterogeneous conversion mode and null conversion mode.?Chinese alien sources and Chinese rhetorical devices lead to the failure of transferring humorous effects from the source text to the target text. When we deal with humor translation, we should try our best to keep as many KRs as possible and respect the language habits of the target readers.It is concluded that GTVH and its Extended Theory can not only guide researches on humor but also enlarge the scope of such kind of researches. Moreover, it is justified that the GTVH and its Extended Theory have validity and operability by broadening the research contents of humor and humor translation.