A Contrastive Research Of Chinese-English Relevance Of Humor Discourse In Three Sisters And Its Translation

In daily life,the expression of humor always impresses people with its unique charm.As for the significance of humor in the field of literature,the translator Lü Yuan gives this comment: “In a certain situation,I almost want to say that humor is the life of literature,at least the life of modern literature.Without humor and a sense of humor,there is no literature,either as a creator or as a viewer”(Lü Yuan,2003:16-18).Therefore,the translation of humorous texts in literary translation should not be taken lightly.English psycholinguist Ernst August Gutt first applied the relevance theory of linguistics to the field of translation.He holds that the principle of relevance is the natural principle of objective existence and the source of all translation principles.The essence of translation is communication,so translation should be regarded as a communicative process of “ostensive-inferential”,aiming to pursue the optimal relevance.Optimal relevance enables the reader to obtain the maximum equivalent effect.Usually,the criterion to judge the effective delivery of humor is the equivalent effect,which is closely related to the optimal relevance.Therefore,some of the concepts and ideas emphasized by relevance translation theory are exactly in line with the particularity of humorous speech and can provide strong explanatory power for humorous translation.This thesis takes Bi Feiyu’s Three Sisters and Howard Goldblatt’s English translation as the research texts.By comparing the relevance of humor discourse between the ST and the TT,the author’s writing intention in a specific historical background and the specific ideology reflected by humor can be better understood.This thesis adopts the statistical method combining corpus and manual annotation.Case analysis,comparative research and qualitative analysis are used in the specific research.This thesis mainly answers the following three questions: firstly,how does the translator deal with the humor discourse in the ST? Secondly,if the translator does not adopt the same noumenon and metaphor as the ST,how does the translator achieve the humor validity equivalent to the ST? Thirdly,what are the reasons for the loss of humor discourse in the translation?Through the research,the author has made the following findings:On the one hand,the humor discourse in the ST is translated by literal translation,modification and omission.In addition,Chinese and English humor discourse have their owncharacteristics,and there are huge differences in national thinking.Gutt puts forward two translation strategies of relevance theory: direct translation and indirect translation.Through the comparison between English and Chinese,it is found that when encountering obstacles in the translation of humor discourse,Goldblatt flexibly adopts the translation strategies in relevance theory and achieves the consistency of relevance between the ST and the TT to achieve communicative function and the equivalence of humor validity.On the other hand,through the analysis of relevant cases,it is found that the main reasons for the lack of humor discourse in the TT are historical and cultural differences and differences in customs and habits.There are many collocations,idioms and figurative languages are quite different from English.If we cannot use the same cultural psychology to understand the idioms,then it is difficult to apply them in translation.Therefore,the author believes that relevance theory can not only detect the differences in the validity of humor,but also guide translation practice at a specific level.That is,translators can flexibly choose direct translation strategies and indirect translation strategies to narrow the differences between Chinese and English cultures,so as to meet people’s reading needs and strengthen cultural exchanges.This thesis aims to deepen the understanding of the essence of humor and strengthen the ability of translators to understand and apply relevance translation theory.It is hoped that it can help improve the translation validity of humorous literary works and promote Chinese novels to the world.