英语双关语及其翻译 [7]
论文作者:潘燕琼论文属性:短文 essay登出时间:2009-04-10编辑:黄丽樱点击率:14264
论文字数:6989论文编号:org200904102255414518语种:英语 English地区:中国价格:免费论文
关键词:English punclassificationcharacteristicsfunctiontranslation英语双关语分类本质特点作用翻译
ve a specified impact upon some audience. Pun fulfils more functions as humor, wit, satire, entertainment, persuasion, and so forth.
4.1 Producing humorous effect
The major function of pun is to produce humorous effect. These puns enable the
speaker or the writer to express his intention indirectly, improving the tension. Sometimes it can even relieve the embarrassed and create a light and happy atmosphere. For example,
(30) “Fourth floor, please,” said the passenger to the elevator.
“Here you are, son”
“How dare you call me son?”
“I brought you up, didn’t I?”
The phrase “bring sb up” can be interpreted as “to educate and care for a child until they are grown up” or “take sb here”. We can learn the smart, lively and humorous in this dialogue.
(31) The professor tapped on his desk and shouted, “Gentle men, Order!”
The entire class yelled, “beer!”
Here, “order” means “be quiet” or “to ask for goods or services to be supplied”. When a professor is having class, naturally, he is asking the students to keep quiet. However, the students use the homonym to twist the professor’s meaning on purpose. Both the students and the professor get what they want. We also believe that the professor cannot help laughing when he hears the students’ response – “beer!” At the moment, humor can be produced and relieve embarrassment.
(32) Hopeless widower - “Nothing can mend a broken heart”.
Hopeful Widow – Except re-pairing
In this example, the key word is “repair”. “Repair” is a polysemic word, however, at the first thought, we are easy to realize the original meaning of “repair”, which is “to fix” or “to mend”. But can we “mend” a broken heart in a usual way? Of course not! From the hint of the spelling of “re-pairing”, we can find the intentional meaning of “widow”. The only way to mend a broken heart is to find a spouse again. Here humor goes with wit.
4.2 Making a bitter satire
To produce satirical effect, a pun is mightier than a sword and it is a brilliant one. A satirical pun is the use of wit to make the attack clever, funny or humorous. For example,
(33) I finally figured out how government works. The Senate gets the bill from the House. The president gets the bill from the Senate. And we get the bill for everything.[20]
Here the first and second “bill” means “draft of a proposed law, to be discussed by a parliament”, the third means “written statement of money owed for goods or services supplied”. The author uses the double meaning of the word “bill” to form pun. By contrast, it shows that the citizens are greatly dissatisfied with the government and make a bitter satire to the rules.
(34) My sister, Mrs. Joe Cargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had established a great reputation with her and the neighbors because she had brought me up “by hand”. Having at the time to find out for oneself what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand.[21]
(Charles Dickens, Great Expectations)
Here the key phrase is “to be brought up by hand”, when we read the first “brought up by hand”, we know it conveys its original meaning, while through the context, we can know that the second implied that Mrs. Joe Cargery usually beat her husband and her you
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