A Study On Humor Translation In O. Henry’s Short Stories Within The Skopostheorie

Entitled as “humor encyclopedia of American life”, O. Henry’s short stories arefamous for its humorous language and unexpected endings, reflecting the glory ofhumanity. It is admired by many translators who translate them into differentversions, among which, translator Wang Yongnian’s rendition enjoys high popularityamong readers and critics.“Skopos Theory”, the cornerstone of German functionalism, has drawnattention of many scholars since its introduction to China and it has been widelyapplied to the study of pure theory and the analysis of texts in the framework of thetheory. And applying the theory to texts mainly focuses on the analysis of thetranslation of texts in different genres, such as advertisement, public signs, brochures,contracts and subtitling. However, only several papers are written to analyze thehumor text translation; while still few papers can be found in the study of WangYongnian’s version within the theory. Therefore, this paper is intended to study thetranslation of a special language phenomenon--verbal humor--in Wang Yongnian’sThe Complete Works of O. Henry from the perspective of Skopostheorie, and to findthe answers to two research questions:Q1: In what aspects does the translator fulfill his translation purpose within theframework of Skopostheorie?Q2: What are the methods applied in Wang’s version in his translation of thesehumors?A successful humor translation is traditionally believed to transfer the humor andelicit laughter among target readers. However, in some situations, one humor which isfunny and laughter-eliciting in source language context doesn’t guarantee the sameeffect on target receivers or it may be even unintelligible if translated. Therefore, inthis cases, transferring meanings and knowledge implied becomes the priorityaccording to the skopos rule. The coherence rule contains two levels: one is thelanguage context coherence which refers to the translated language should be meaningful and cohesive in target language context and the other is non-languagecontext coherence which means factors as culture and conventions should be coherentin target context so that readers can make sense of it. The fidelity rule is displayed inthree aspects---sounds, forms and style.The analysis leads to a conclusion that translator discriminates the two differenttranslation skopos, enlightening readers with the the humor or the impliedinformation or knowledge that produce the humor, even though they cannot fullyappreciate humors. The rendition achieves the language context coherence andnon-language context coherence. It is a faithful reproduction of the original beauty ofthe ST in sounds, forms and style.As to the translation methods that the translator mainly employs, they can bediscussed at two levels--at the lexical level and syntactical level. The form includescounterpart replacement, lexical amplification, omission, abstraction of concretewords, concretization of abstract words and changing parts of speech; the latterconsists of changing or keeping sentences orders, punctuation of sentences, changingnegative sentence into affirmative one and replacing passive tone with active one. Theanalysis is concentrated on effects on fulfilling the translation purpose by applyingthese skills. The conclusion is that all these skills help to preserve the humorous tone,maintain coherence in target language and culture and achieve literature charms.