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s thetheory into prominence. He claims that laughter can release “psychic energy". This energy,if continuously built up within one's body and no further use at all, will greatly harm hishealth. This spontaneous release is realized in laughter and held as favorable to commonhealth.Incongruity theory studies humor from psychological, or more precisely, cognitiveperspective. It is considered as the most widely accepted and most influential approach tothe study of humor, dominating the contemporary research of humor theory. In terms ofincongruity, it proposes that two different concepts are in opposition with one another.When it comes to the humor theory, it refers to the contradictions between what oneformerly speculates and what he really gets. The main supporters of this theory includeKant and Schopenhauer who proposed and developed it. Kant (1892: 224) said, “Laughteris an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation intonothing.” According to Schopenhauer's definition of laughter, “The cause of laughter inevery case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and thereal objects which have been thought through it in some relation, and laughter itself is justthe expression of this incongruity." (Schopenhauer, 1819，quoted in Morreall, 1987)The above classic theories, together as a whole, have found the essence of humorand its mechanism. As is known to all, humor brings joy and wits, sometimes cansuccessfully served as a language weapon. Due to different cultures, religions and socialsystem, people from different countries have difficulties in understanding each other'sjoke and sharing the laughter; therefore, a growing number of translators have beenstriving to find the way out in the field of humor translation.In the preface to his translation of Evolution and Ethics，Yan Fu put forward thewell-known translation criterion, namely faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance, whichis deemed as the standard of a desirable humor translation for later generations. ‘Equivalence-based translation theories, stated mainly by Eugene A. Nida，are also popularover the past fifty years in the translation circle, and applied in humor translation. What ismore, domestication strategy, cooperative principle and speech act theory are oftenadopted to study humor translation. However, these translation theories or approaches arestill incapable of translating humor for it involves rhetorical devices and culturalbackground. Merely within the frame of equivalence or faithfulness cannot humor beadequately investigated or described. Humor only exists in the cognitive process of thecommunicators and only through inference can it be obtained. Relevance theory seems toprovide an entirely new angle to view humor translation for it explains the underlyingcognitive process involved in the production and comprehension of humor. Moreover, it isa good complement to the incongruity theory.The Significance of the StudyHumor is an interesting word play in the mechanism of human brain. As a result,studies on linguistics are not enough to unfold the mystery in humor or convey originalauthor's essentials in the humor. It will be a new and challenging task to study humortranslation from a cognitive perspective combined with relevance theory.The context in relevance theory embodies different cultural and historicalinformation behind different languages, which is necessary to figure out in translationprocess. The co