Abstract

    As one of subjects of humor, English verbal humor translation has been under the spotlight for a long time. For it brings the possibility of people who come from different cultural backgrounds sharing their laughter. However, the humorous effect of source language can not be copied into the target language completely. It is difficult because of the language and culture difference between source language and target language. With the further development of the study, functional translation skopos theory was put forward, which has three principles: the skopos rule, the fidelity rule and the coherence rule. In this thesis, the author puts the skopos theory as the breakthrough point to analyze English verbal humor translation. Guided by skopos theory, different translating strategies can be adopted in order that the humorous effect of source language can be felt by the target audience.

Key Words: English verbal humor  skopos theory  translation strategy

摘  要

幽默能够使人更好的表达情感，给人们带来欢声笑语。作为源远流长的语言和文化内涵的载体，西方对幽默的研究可以追溯到柏拉图和亚里士多德时代，在跨文化交流日益频繁的今天，幽默更是吸引了越来越多的人对其关注与研究。而幽默语言的翻译，能够使不同文化背景的人分享快乐，加深彼此的了解与文化交流。然而，由于源语与译语的语言和文化差异，幽默的翻译一直存在诸多困难，源语的幽默效果很难完全复制到译语中去。随着研究的进一步深入，功能主义翻译目的论应运而生，其原则有三，即目的原则、连贯性原则和忠实性原则。本文以功能翻译理论的核心目的论为切入点，旨在深入分析幽默一般分类中的言语幽默的翻译。根据这一理论，在翻译英语语言幽默时选择适当的翻译策略，使源语翻译的幽默效果在译语中有效可行。

关键词：英语言语幽默 目的论 翻译策略

1 Introduction

    Humor is a familiar phenomenon in our daily life, but it is much more complex than most people realized. As Koestler(1989) states, “Humor is the only domain of creative activity where a stimulus on a high level of complexity produces a massive and sharply defined response on the level of physiological reflexes.’’(p.31) It is also an indispensable part in our daily life’s communication, for humor has a great power in expressing emotions. Our life would be full of laughter if we can better appreciate and create humor. As a linguistic and cultural carrier, humor has been studied for thousands of years and the study in western countries can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle and it still attracts much attention now.