A Comparative Study Of Humorous Utterance Translation In Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a masterpiece of English children’s literature.It is produced by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson published in 1865.It was once considered as “an untranslatable book” for many word plays and rhetorical devices adopted in the book.Studies on this book have been continuous with the main emphasis on Skopos theory,Reception theory and the forth.This thesis chooses three Chinese versions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to do a comparative study.Focuses on three aspects of cognitive context: linguistic knowledge,encyclopedic knowledge and situational context to analyze the similarity and difference of translation methods used by three translators.By comparing the three versions,the analysis shows that in Chao Yuanren’s version,based on his knowledge about the cognitive ability of the target readers,he adopts lots of puns and the analogy methods to realize the author’s humorous intention and some of his translations have become classic versions;in Wang Yongnian’s version,he tends to maintain the source text both in linguistic and in its meaning,and adopts the literal translation;Zhang Hua’s version is considered as a Chinese annotated version,with many annotations to illustrate the author’s humorous intention based on the target readers’ background.Through comparative analysis,this thesis puts forward that translators should take into account the cognitive ability and preference of the target reader in the selection of the translation methods in the process of humorous utterances translation.The translator is expected to adopt appropriate translation methods and techniques to make the target readers and the source text readers expectation identical to the humorous utterance in the source text in accordance to the three aspects of the cognitive context,so that the humor effect get conveyed.