A Study On English-Chinese Translation Of Humour From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Humour, a comic and amusing expression which lubricates human communication, plays an essential role in man-to-man exchange of emotions, attitudes and ideas. With more frequent cultural exchange between China and other nations, an increasing number of humorous works in English have been introduced into Chinese culture. However, English-Chinese translation of humour has been frequently regarded as an un-bridged barrier as a result of linguistic and cultural differences between source language and target language. Traditional translation theories including the theory of faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance advocated by Yan Fu (1898) and equivalence theory proposed by Nida (1964), which aim to achieve faithfulness or equivalence to the source text, frequently fail to produce desirable humorous effects in the target language. Thus, neither of the above-mentioned theories seems adequate in accounting for the translation practice of humour.Relevance Theory (RT) proposed by Sperber and Wilson (2001), which strives to interpret language phenomena from a cognitive point of view, may be applied successfully to different types of discourses not only in terms of understanding the essence of humour but also in terms of translation of humour in bi-lingual environments. The process of communication may be regarded as a cognitive activity of human beings, with much emphasis on cognitive environment, context and optimal relevance which are important for translation practice. Inspired by the basic framework put forward in Relevance Theory, Ernst-August Gutt (2004) takes the lead in application of this theory to translation studies, with an insightful view of Relevance Theory applied to translation in the solution of quite a number of complicated phenomena during translation process. Since humour translation is regarded as a special kind of translation, Relevance Theory is employed as an applicable theory with stronger interpretive force than traditional modes on humour translation.This thesis, aiming to investigate the process of English-Chinese translation of humour from the RT perspective, endeavours to apply its principles and methods to the re-construction of humour in the target language. The author expects that this research on humour translation from the perspective of Relevance Theory will prove to be beneficial for the translation of humour and that in the future there will be more desirable humour versions so that people with different cultural backgrounds can share emotions, attitudes and senses of humour expressed by the authors in the original works.