A Contrastive Study And Translation Of Humorous English And Chinese

Humor is pervasive in our life. It not only helps to oil interpersonal relationships but also does good to psychological health. More often than not, humor is expressed by language. Humorous language is so universal that it exists in each nation. This thesis focuses on the comparative study of humorous English and Chinese and the translating of humorous language. The study begins with a comparison between humorous English and Chinese in terms of their respective language-created humor. It has been found out that the English and Chinese share similarities in the humor-creating linguistic devices, which have been analyzed in accordance with figures of speech, phonetic devices, lexical devices, syntactic devices and ambiguity. This result finds support in the presented examples in both English and Chinese for each category of linguistic device. In addition, as a social and cultural phenomenon, the humorous language is closely related with religious beliefs, social attitudes and customs, etc. Language mirrors culture, and humorous language is no exception. People in Western culture and those in Chinese culture have different use of humorous language. This thesis, on the basis of a comparison of the two cultures, continues to put forward three hypotheses on the differences between the humorous English in the context of American culture and the humorous Chinese in the context of Chinese Culture. The hypotheses are as follows: (1) American topics of humorous language are different from those of Chinese. (2) Humorous language has a special function for Chinese: to give advice. Such a function is not so important for Americans. (3) Americans and Chinese enjoy different artistic forms of humorous language. The proofs of the hypotheses can be found in the examples and the remarks of some scholars home and abroad who have been engaged in humor study. The thesis also discusses the issue of translating humorous language. The discussion begins with an analysis of the translatability and untranslatability of humorous language. Some language-created humor and cultural humor are deemed to be untranslatable because their meaning and function cannot simultaneously be retained in the target text. However, the...