On The Chinese Translation Of English Verbal Humor In Animal Farm And Its Chinese Versions

Humor,a common linguistic phenomenon,is an indispensable part in human life,and plays an important role in social communication and interpersonal relationship.The study of humor is a multidisciplinary subject,and the current researches on it focus on philosophy,psychology,linguistics,sociology and so on.Grounded on the General Theory of Verbal Humor and its Extended Theory,this research takes the extracted sentences from Gorge Orwell's novel Animal Farm and Rong Rude's and Fu Weici's translated versions as basic unit to compile a Chinese-English bilingual parallel corpus of verbal humor with the purpose of discussing the characteristics of English verbal humor and exploring optimum translation method for English verbal humor translation,hoping to shed lights for the researches on English verbal humor and its translation.The major findings in this research are presented in the following.Firstly,rhetorical devices are the main triggers for humor generation in Animal Farm and its two Chinese versions,and there are in total five rhetorical devices contained in Animal Farm and its two corresponding Chinese versions,namely irony,simile,hyperbole,metaphor and personification.Secondly,in total four types of translation methods are adopted in translating verbal humor in Animal Farm.Literal translation is the most frequently used method and also the optimum way in translating English verbal humor in Animal Farm,and free translation is an important supplement,while substitution and synthesization are not to that significant.Besides,by comparing the preservation of parameters and humorous effects in Rong's and Fu's version,Rong's version is better than Fu's version in the aspect of verbal humor translation.Lastly,in order to reserve humorous effects,no matter what kinds of translation methods are adopted,the preservation of more parameters is in priority when translating English verbal humor,especially the highest parameter SO.