Chapter 11. Translating puns in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
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Samantha Zhan Xu
Abstract
This paper takes a pragmatic perspective and draws upon a relevance-theoretic approach to examine how the issue of (un)translatability is addressed in English to Chinese translation, based on three Chinese translations of the English classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland taken from three significant periods in China’s contemporary literary and socio-economic history. Pun emerges in the novel, which has been renowned for its “impossibility” to be translated, as the most outstanding type of (un)translatability. A successful translation under the relevance-theoretic framework, which views translation as a communicative act, calls for an interpretive resemblance between source text and target text rather than equivalence (Sperber and Wilson 1986; Gutt 1991, 2014). This paper takes the translation of puns in Alice in Wonderland, as a case study, and employs Delabastita’s (1996) typology of puns and translation methods to analyse and contrast the three translators’ strategies. By assessing the degree of relevance achieved in the three translations and to what extent the new relevance resembles the original one, this study finds that the translators show different patterns in their approaches towards (un)translatability. The socio-cultural environments and the translators’ own subjectivity are found to be major contributive factors in communicating what’s deemed relevant to the target text audience.
Abstract
This paper takes a pragmatic perspective and draws upon a relevance-theoretic approach to examine how the issue of (un)translatability is addressed in English to Chinese translation, based on three Chinese translations of the English classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland taken from three significant periods in China’s contemporary literary and socio-economic history. Pun emerges in the novel, which has been renowned for its “impossibility” to be translated, as the most outstanding type of (un)translatability. A successful translation under the relevance-theoretic framework, which views translation as a communicative act, calls for an interpretive resemblance between source text and target text rather than equivalence (Sperber and Wilson 1986; Gutt 1991, 2014). This paper takes the translation of puns in Alice in Wonderland, as a case study, and employs Delabastita’s (1996) typology of puns and translation methods to analyse and contrast the three translators’ strategies. By assessing the degree of relevance achieved in the three translations and to what extent the new relevance resembles the original one, this study finds that the translators show different patterns in their approaches towards (un)translatability. The socio-cultural environments and the translators’ own subjectivity are found to be major contributive factors in communicating what’s deemed relevant to the target text audience.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Chapter 1. Researching the Chinese language and discourse 1
- Chapter 2. The distribution of null subjects in Chinese discourse 11
- Chapter 3. Conversational narrative marker 37
- Chapter 4. Windows of attention and the polysemy of V-kai 59
- Chapter 5. The acceptability of 把 ba +subject-oriented resultatives in Mandarin Chinese 73
- Chapter 6. Gender representation in Chinese language 101
- Chapter 7. Understanding stancetaking through gestures and linguistic practices in a public political debate in Hong Kong 119
- Chapter 8. Representations of Pinkunsheng in China’s university media 147
- Chapter 9. Language resources of Yunnan in “the Belt and Road” project 167
- Chapter 10. Impact of power relations on news translation in China 177
- Chapter 11. Translating puns in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 195
- Chapter 12. Translation and re-narration of Nainai 219
- Name index 229
- Subject index 231
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Chapter 1. Researching the Chinese language and discourse 1
- Chapter 2. The distribution of null subjects in Chinese discourse 11
- Chapter 3. Conversational narrative marker 37
- Chapter 4. Windows of attention and the polysemy of V-kai 59
- Chapter 5. The acceptability of 把 ba +subject-oriented resultatives in Mandarin Chinese 73
- Chapter 6. Gender representation in Chinese language 101
- Chapter 7. Understanding stancetaking through gestures and linguistic practices in a public political debate in Hong Kong 119
- Chapter 8. Representations of Pinkunsheng in China’s university media 147
- Chapter 9. Language resources of Yunnan in “the Belt and Road” project 167
- Chapter 10. Impact of power relations on news translation in China 177
- Chapter 11. Translating puns in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 195
- Chapter 12. Translation and re-narration of Nainai 219
- Name index 229
- Subject index 231
