OnE-CTranslaionofEnglishHumorsAFuncionalisPerspecive_开题报告

1. Research objectives and significance/ issues to be discussed and relevant means to be employed, etc.

    

Humor is an essential part of a culture. To totally understand a nation, we have to understand and appreciate its humor, which makes the translation of humor necessary.

However, in the translation field, it has been widely acknowledged that humor translation can make a translator feel as desperate as poetry translation can, which indicates that it is very difficult to translate humor. But even so, scholars and translators are still working on it, trying to approach humor translation from one perspective or another and a lot of achievements on humor translation have been made so far. 

In previous studies, humor is classified into situational humor and non-situational humor for the purpose of translation. Generally speaking, it is considered easier to deal with situational humor because this kind of humor is neither language-bound nor culture-bound. However, problems are likely to arise in the non-situational humor category due to the fact that humor of this kind is mainly produced with the aid of linguistic techniques and cultural background information．As far as translation of this category of humor is concerned, translation strategies like domestication and annotation are highly recommended．If the translator can not produce exactly the same humor in the target text as that in the source text, he or she is recommended to produce similar humor in the target text, and if similar humor can not be produced either, the translator can resort to annotation to ensure that the target text receiver can feel the humor after reading the annotation. 

A brief review of the previous studies on humor translation shows that whatever approach is adopted in discussing this issue, focus is always on how to produce humor in the target text. Therefore, the question of whether a humorous source text must lead to a humorous target text was raised here in this thesis. Besides, what if a humorous target text can not function appropriately in the target culture? 

Actually, the answer can be probed into within the framework of functionalist translation theory. Within this theoretical framework, the source text just offers information and a translator chooses certain pieces of information to form a target text which can satisfy the requirements for the target situation in the target culture. Viewed from this perspective, a humorous source text does not have to be translated into a humorous target text, and the type of target text is determined by the translation brief. 

Here the thesis will classify humor translation into two types: humor-oriented translation and non—humor-oriented translation, depending on whether humorous function is the primary function of the target text. Occasions of both will be discussed and suggestions will also be given in the thesis.

Outline

  On E-C Translation of English Humors: A Functionalist Perspective

  Abstract

I INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

   1.2 Research Orientation and Significances

   1.3 Clarification of Some Concepts

      1.3.1 English Humors

      1.3.2 E-C Translation of English Humors

   1.4 Organization of the Thesis

II PREVIOUS STUDIES

   2.1 Previous Studies on Humor Translation

      2.1.1 Translatability of Humor

      2.1.2 Classification of Humor for the Purpose of Translation

      2.1.3 Strategies Adopted to Translate Different Kinds of Humor

   2.2 Problems on Previous Studies

      2.2.1 Humor-producing-centered

      2.2.2 Source-text-centered

III FUNCTIONALIST TRANSLATION THEORIES

   3.1 Katharina Reiss' Text Typology and Critical Views

     3.1.1 Text Typology

     3.1.2 Critical Views on Text Typology

   3.2 J.Hans. Vermeer' Skopos Theory

     3.2.1 Skopos Theory

     3.2.2 Critical View on Skopos Theory

   3.3 Action Theory and Critical Views

      3.3.1 Action Theory

      3.3.2 Critical Views on Action Theory

IV A FUNCTIONALIST PERSPECTIVE

   4.1 Humorous Source Text and Humorous Target Source Text 

      4.1.1 Humorous Source Text

      4.1.2 Classification of Target Texts

   4.2 Analysis of Two Types of Humor Translation

      4.2.1 Humor-oriented Translation

      4.2.2 Non-humor-oriented Translation

   4.3 Challenges for a Translator in Humor Translation

      4.3.1 Identifying the Humorous Elements

      4.3.2 Identifying the Primary Function of the Target Text Based on the                                 

          Translation Brief

   4.4 Summary

V CONCLUSION

   References

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