A Study On The Translation Of Verbal Humor In Short Stories By O.Henry

Humor,which can be found everywhere in our daily life,is a common language phenomenon and plays a significant part in the process of communication.Chinese and western scholars have studied humor from different aspects,mostly focusing on linguistics,philosophy,psychology,sociology and so on.In addition,with the faster and deeper cultural communication between China and western countries,a number of outstanding works are flooding into China.It is very meaningful to preserve humorous effects when the verbal humor of English works is translated into Chinese.This research makes attempts to explore the translation principles of Short Stories of O.Henry by applying the GTVH and its Extended Theory.Humorous texts are extracted from The Cop and the Anthem,the Gift of the Magi,The Furnished Room and The Romance of a Busy Broker in Short Stories of O.Henry,which builds an English-Chinese parallel database to make a comparative analysis on the application of six parameters between the original text and two Chinese versions.By dividing the data into different types,this research attempts to analyze the characteristics of verbal humor in Short Stories of O.Henry and the translation methods employed in two Chinese versions and explore what strategies are used by translators to reserve humor in the original text.It is found that the majority of the verbal humor in Short Stories of O.Henry is triggered by rhetorical devices,which reflected the hardship of the mass in the lower-class society.What's more,the GTVH and its Extended Theory are very suitable to make analysis on Wang's and Li's Chinese versions in Short Stories of O.Henry.Finally,Literal translation,free translation,substitution and synthesization are applied both in Wang's and Li's Chinese versions.Chinese Jiang Yong,a unique rhetorical device,is used in the two Chinese versions replacing the rhetorical device in the source text.On the other hand,in Li's Chinese version,a few rhetorical devices which do not appear in the original text are added to the humorous texts.