Translation Of Humor From The Perspective Of Funchonal Equivalence Theory

Being the famous humorist,novelist,and realist of America,Mark Twain creates hundreds of works,which are typical of both humor and irony with joy and sorrow mixed up.Many of his classics have been translated to China,especially his classics: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.However,knowing about these works is far from knowing a real master of literature masterpieces.In fact,his short stories also have a great influence on the international literature world.Translators of Mark Twain’s short stories are not a few,such as Zhang Yousong,Yan Jianhua and Liu Jianguo,and Ye Dongxin etc.But the fact is that common readers know more about two adventures than his humorous short stories.Furthermore,humor in Mark Twain’s adventurous works concerns more about children,whose humor is different from adults’ humor.Then methods of translating these two kinds of humor may be different.In order to cover more of Twain’s short stories,the current thesis picks 9 typical short stories from all his creation.The thesis compares different translation versions and analyzes their translating strategies according to Functional Equivalence theory by Nida which suggests: 1)Equivalence should be at the level of function,instead of meaning and style,then the closest and natural equivalence lies therefore at the level of function;2)Readers’ reaction are included in judging if a translation version is good or not.Since humor in Mark Twain’s short stories is the main textual function,and his humor at different periods is different,it is urgent that different effect of humor at different periods should be translated equivalently.Then adopting the Functional Equivalence theory to study humor translation in Twain’s short stories is adaptable.The current research shows that 1)For universal humor,literal is the main translating method,but not the only one.Sometimes,in order to make the target text more readable,complement,explicit etc.methods are employed;2)Linguistic humor in Mark Twain’s short stories is based on rhetoric devices and some slang languages.Then effective translation methods are generally literal,but sometimes substitute also helps;3)Culture-based humor are basically translated effectively with the method of literal with annotation,but sometimes conversion can also be a good choice if it is necessary in order to achieve the equivalent effect.By doing this,the current thesis is to popularize more of Twain’s short stories.And it will be better if it benefits to more humorous works’ translation.