Abstract

Humor is an indispensable part of daily communication and the entertainment. In the circumstance of globalization, humor, the verbal humor in particular, is bound to be a prominent element of cross-cultural communication not only for its own sake, but for the tough task of humor translation. A substantial amount of researches and studies have been concerned about the humor from dimensions of sociology and psychology, while, it has seldom been probed into for its application in translation comprehensively. This paper is supposed to focus on the following three issues: (1) Why is it a tough work for verbal humor translation? (2)Why is the Relevance Theory applicable to the verbal humor translation? (3) As a masterpiece of literature, especially in the verbal humor area, Fortress Besiege(Qian,2005) could serve as a typical case to analyze the appropriate methods in practical translation. Is it possible to generalize some theoretical principles and practical methods that can be applied in verbal humor translating process through the case analysis of Fortress Besirged.

Key Words: humor;Relevance Theory;translation;Fortress Besieged

摘要

幽默是人们日常交际和娱乐不可或缺的一部分。在如今全球化的大浪潮之下，不同文化语言背景的人交际越来越频繁，这就使得幽默，尤其是语言幽默这个交际的特殊成分在跨文化交际中扮演着尤为重要的角色，同时幽默翻译的艰难也使幽默语言备受瞩目。幽默在社会学和心理学领域已经展开了大量的研究，但从幽默语言翻译的角度，还鲜有全面的探究。本文主要围绕以下三点展开：(1)为什么幽默语言翻译难度大？（2）关联理论为什么适用于幽默语言的翻译？（3）《围城》作为幽默巨著是很好的研究幽默语言翻译策略的典范，以《围城》为例可否归纳出适用于一般幽默语言翻译的理论方法和实践策略。

关键词：幽默;关联理论;翻译;围城

Chapter1. Introduction
Humor is an indispensable part of daily communication and interpersonal relationship. In the circumstance of globalization, humor, the verbal humor in particular, is bound to be a prominent element of cross-cultural communication not only for its own sake, but for the tough task of humor translation.
A substantial amount of researches and studies on humor both at home and abroad have made a lot of theoretic achievements on verbal humor translation and do have contributed a great deal to guiding practical humor translation. While doing the literature review on the topic, the author of the paper found an interesting approach to improving verbal humor translation, that is, a perspective of relevance theory. This paper takes the English version of Fortress Besieged translated by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao as an example to illustrate the application of relevance theory in the verbal humor translation and explore in this connection better guiding theories to serve the practical translation.