The paper consists of a Content, Introduction, three chapters (two of them are theoretical, and the last chapter is a practical one), then follows Conclusions, References, Summary and Appendix containing the remnant examples and a piece of information about the author of the novels. In the first chapter the definitions of humour itself and its cultural and linguistic aspects are being discussed. Since humour is rather elusive as a theoretical concept we are going to mention only the definitions or theories that are related to the research. As humour is often culturally specific it nearly always contains some piece of sociocultural information shared between the sender and the recipient. Unless the recipient is aware of it, the joke fails to perform its function. The relevance of E. Nida’s theory of dynamic equivalence to the translation of humour and other translation problems such as cultural and linguistic ones are being analyzed in the second chapter. The problem of this type of translation is that of recasting the humorous effect. Eugene Nida’s theory of dynamic equivalence requires analysing the source language text and then restructuring it before transferring it to the target language in such a way that will make a perfect sense in the target language. The third chapter is a practical one and it deals with the achievements and failures of translating humour in the above-mentioned novels, i.e. Bridget Jones’s Diary and Bridget Jones’s Diary: the Edge of Reason by Helen... [to full text]

This Master's thesis analyzes Three Men in a Boat, a famous work by a British author Jerome Klapka Jerome. It is a very popular humorous novel published in 1889 which rightly belongs to the classics of British humour and is still attracting new readers today. The novel has been translated into dozens of languages including Chinese. The thesis is based on comparing the original work to its modern Chinese translation produced by Wang Bi, the analysis is conducted in the direction from English to Chinese. For reference, it also uses the Czech translation by J. Novák. Methodologically, the thesis builds on structuralist terminology created by the Czech translation theorist Jiří Levý. For text analysis, it utilizes an influential theoretical concept invented by the German translation scholar Christiane Nord. It also takes into account specialized studies on humour literature and the problems of its translation. The thesis attempts to define British humour and characterize the author's devices to achieve comic effect. It thoroughly decribes the strategies chosen for translating some of the individual literary devices (e.g. hyperbole, irony, understatement or personification) into Chinese. The complex analysis presents specific examples of translating verbal, cultural and situational humour. It also...