论《西游记》中言语幽默的翻译

On the Translation of Chinese Verbal Humor in The Journ ey to the West

选取《西游记》及其英译本《The Journey to the West》中的言语幽默为研究对象,探讨《西游记》中言语幽默的特点,以及译文中言语幽默的翻译特征。研究发现《西游记》中幽默的生成是通过运用大量的修辞手段实现的,如明喻、暗喻及借代。在英译过程中,有些修辞手段得以保留,有的修辞手段却被转换,还有的修辞手段消失。修辞手段的处理有同类转换、异类转换和零类转换三种类型。要保留原文中的幽默,应尽可能使用同类转换和异类转换模式,而零类转换模式对幽默效果的保留不甚理想。

This paper takes The Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en and its English version translated by C.Yu as the research object.Based on the General Theory of Verbal Humor(GTVH)and its Extended Theory,a bilingual parallel corpus is established.It can be found that humors are triggered mostly by plenty of rhetorical devices,such as simile,metaphor and metonymy.During the process of translation,some devices are retained,others transformed,and the rest are removed.There are three transformation modes to deal with the rhetorical devices:homogeneous,heterogeneous and null transformation modes.To reserve as much as possible the humor in the source texts,translators should give priority to homogeneous and heterogeneous translation modes.However,null transformation mode can not bring a desirable result in transferring the humorous effect into the target text.