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Humor translation is also a focus for scholars. With the rapid development of economic globalization, it has become an urgent need for people in different courtiers to understand each other, and humor, as a special language and culture phenomenon, plays an important role in promoting interpersonal relationships and in better understanding of another country’s customs. Due to different language and culture background, most people, except for a limited number of those who can are master in English, can only appreciate those jokes and funny conversations with the translated version. Therefore, humor translation is a tough job considering language and culture factors.
1.2 Purpose and significance of this study
Humor is an indispensable part in our life，and it has an irreplaceable position in relieving stress and promoting human relationships.
The study of humor can be of great utility in almost every aspect in our society: economy, culture, even politics. Therefore, by furthering the study of mechanism and translation of English humor, this thesis aims to make people understand humor better and apply humor in better ways.
For students who study English as a second language, the methods of humor translation and its application would be of great use in their learning and study, moreover,
2 Analysis on language mechanism
2.1 The formation of humor
Humor can be created in many different ways, for instance, from phonological, lexical, syntactic, logical, rhetorical perspectives (Cui Yahui, 2008).
2.1.1 Phonological perspective
Humor can be formed with words’ pronunciations, stress in sentences or change the negative and positive tones in conversations to realize the purpose of sarcasm. Take one scene from Friends as an example.
[1] Joey: The Estelle Leonard Talent Agency. Wow, an agency left me its card! Maybe they wanna sign me!
PHOEBE: Based on th--is play? ...Based on THIS play!
Joey has just finished a music play but actually it’s pretty awful. So when Joey was excited about the possible chance, Phoebe was quiet amazed, so she questioned about it, but as she sensed her tone, she said the same sentence but in an affirmative tone.
2.1.2 Lexical perspective
The formation of humor from lexical aspect can mainly be pided into two ways: ambiguity and deliberate misinterpretation.
Ambiguity is a common language phenomenon in almost every language. English, as a language, has experienced a long time development throughout history and gradually formed its own lexical features, polysemy, homonymy, broadening and narrowing of lexical meaning, etc(Yang Weiqin, 2005).