A Study On The Joke Translation In CHIN P’ING MEI From The Perspective Of Cooperative Principle

This thesis intends to explore the joke’s humorous elements and its translation from the perspective of Cooperative Principle (CP) in pragmatics with special reference to (also called the Scoffing scholar of Lanling) Lanling Xiaoxiaosheng’s original text and the two English versions of CHIN P’ING MEI by Clement Egerton and David Tod Roy.As one of the core principles in pragmatics, CP has played an instructive and inspiring role in the research of conversation, which deserves much more attention. It was first proposed by Grice, and according to his opinion, this principle mainly intends to bind and guide the interlocutors’verbal behavior in the conversation. It owns four maxims, namely the maxims of quality, quantity, relation and manner, all of which mean to set the norm for the content of a conversion and the way to express the information. In the view of Grice, the precondition of ensuring the effective conversation is to obey CP and its four maxims. However, some verbal humors usually violate one or more than one maxims of CP, thus generating the conversational implicature so as to achieve the effects such as exaggeration, satire, amusement, etc. Having considered that the translation is a written communication process between the author and the translator, and between the translator and the target readers, some scholars maintain that CP can be also applied to translation process of humor. Thus, this thesis will analyze how the humorous effect of the jokes in CHIN P’ING MEI is achieved.It is indisputable that CHIN P’ING MEI has owned a high status in the history of our ancient literature. As the first novel about social trends mainly describing the family life in ancient China, CHIN P’ING MEI has also involved a large amount of comic contents. In the novel, few as the number of jokes is, it stands out for its special features and we can say that this novel holds all characters that a successful comic work shall have. However, when the scholars carry on research on this novel, they used to ignore the jokes within. It is believed that CP and its four maxims can guide the joke translation as well. In the process of translation, the translator can be seen as a cultural messenger who pays attention to the process of conversation with the author, the translator himself, and then the target readers During this process, the translator makes full use of his own translated version to guarantee a smooth and successful conversation between the target readers and the author, hence realizing the cross-cultural function. In addition, the translator should follow the four maxims as well. As a result, another major content of this thesis aims to explore how the four maxims of CP are used to deliver the humorous effect of original text in reference to the two English versions of CHIN P’ING MEI and this in return expands the applied area of translation in pragmatics. Finally, from the study and analysis in this thesis, it can be concluded that according to the characteristics of the jokes, different translation strategies can be put forward and the suitable translation can be sought.The main body of this thesis includes five parts. The first part is the introduction, and the second one serves as the literature review which introduces the humor theories and humor translation; the third part is the theoretical framework, mainly presenting us the Cooperative Principle and its application in translation; the fourth part is the highlight in this paper, which classifies the jokes in CHIN P’ING MEI and analyses the joke translation by David Tod Roy and Egerton under the guidance of CP; the fifth part is the conclusion.