On study of how the time of translation of a book affects English--shaotong chen--13258825

On How the Time of Translation
Affects English-Chinese
Wordplay Translation Quality:
A Case Study of Alice in Wonderland
SHAOTONG CHEN
MA INTERPRETING
2012

On How the Time of Translation
Affects English-Chinese
Wordplay Translation Quality:
A Case Study of Alice in Wonderland
SHAOTONG CHEN
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the
requirements for the degree of MA in Interpreting
Supervisor: Bing Fu
July 2012

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Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my supervisor Ms. Fu for her generous help as well
as understanding, encouragement and guidance throughout this Thesis.
I would also like to express my thanks for my family and friends for their
support; I couldn't have finished this thesis without them.

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Abstract
This thesis assumes that time should be considered as a major factor when assessing the quality
of wordplay translations as it affects the translation quality and sets out to investigate to what
degree the time of translation of a book affect the translation quality of wordplay from English
into Chinese by using House's Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) Model. If the assumption
that there is an affect is proved to be correct, it will help provide a better understanding to the
translation quality assessment system, which may in turn standardize the translation market, and
also provide more grounds in understanding translation behavior.
By assuming that when different translations of the same book were translated at different
historical period and were assessed by the same translation quality assessment method, the
translation quality results maybe be different mainly because of the differences among the
historical times in which they were translated, this thesis elaborated different approaches in
translation quality assessment before deciding to choose House's TQA model to assess three
different translations of Alice in Wonderland, which were translated in 1922, 2000 and 2010.
After the quality assessment, wordplay translation of the three versions will be looked at to
discuss how time affects their translation quality. Here, the wordplay is defined as Proper Names,
Puns, and Parodies.
The findings were that three translations have very different translation qualities which proved
that the time of translation does affect translation quality greatly. Time affects Proper Name and
Parody Translation more than pun translation. For Proper Names, the earlier the translation, the
more atypical the name could be translated. As for parodies, the earlier the translation, the more
it was translated using the form of traditional Chinese poems. While puns are rarely affected as
translators either decides to translate the pun, which earlier translators did, or not translate the
pun but adding footnotes to explain it. The way some special words were translated can also
reflect time's effect on translation. Also, the bigger the time differences between the translations,
the bigger the differences would be.
However this thesis admits that time is just one of the major factors contributing to the

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differences of assessment results.

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgement.........................................................................................1
Abstract .............................................................................................................2
Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................7
Chapter 2 Literature Review...................................................................10
2.1 Different Approaches to Translation Quality Assessment and Their Criteria.....10
2.1.1 Traditional Approaches ...................................................................................................10
2.1.2 Receiver Perspective Approaches................................................................................11
2.1.3 Functionalist Approaches................................................................................................14
2.1.4 Text-related Approaches.................................................................................................17
2.1.5 Cultural-based Approaches ............................................................................................18
2.1.6 Register-based Approaches............................................................................................19
2.2 Wordplay types and Translation Approaches..................................................................20
Chapter 3 Methodology.............................................................................22
3.1 House's TQA Model and Data Analysis................................................................................22
3.2 Data Selection...............................................................................................................................24
3.3 Data Collection---Wordplay in Alice in Wonderland.......................................................25
Chapter 4 Data Analysis and Discussion ............................................29
4.1 Source Text Analysis..................................................................................................................29
Mode.........................................................................................................................33
Genre.........................................................................................................................33
Statement of Function..............................................................................................33
4.2Comparison of Original and Translation ............................................................................33
4.2.1 Zhao's Alice in Wonderland............................................................................................34
Field...........................................................................................................................34
Tenor .........................................................................................................................35
Mode.........................................................................................................................36
Genre.........................................................................................................................36

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Statement of Quality.................................................................................................36
4.2.2 Wang's Alice in Wonderland ..........................................................................................36
Field...........................................................................................................................36
Tenor .........................................................................................................................37
Mode.........................................................................................................................38
Genre.........................................................................................................................38
Overt Errors...............................................................................................................38
4.2.3 Wu's Alice's Adventure in Wonderland......................................................................39
Field...........................................................................................................................39
Tenor .........................................................................................................................40
Mode.........................................................................................................................41
Genre.........................................................................................................................41
4.3 Discussion of the Results and Time's Effect on Wordplay Translation...................41
4.3.1 Proper Names ......................................................................................................................41
4.3.2 Puns.........................................................................................................................................43
4.3.3 Parodies.................................................................................................................................46
Chapter 5 Conclusions...............................................................................49
5.1 Conclusions...................................................................................................................................49
5.2 Limitation of the Study .............................................................................................................49
References.....................................................................................................51
Appendix I Proper Names Translation and Meaning Form.........54
Appendix II Puns Form .............................................................................56
Appendix III Puns Translation Form ...................................................59
Appendix IV Parody Translation Form...............................................62

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List of Tables and Forms
Form 1: Appendix I Proper Names Translation and Meaning Form
Form 2: Appendix II Puns Forms
Form 3: Appendix III Puns Translation Forms
Form 4: Appendix IV Parody Translation Form

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Chapter 1 Introduction
Probably from the very beginning of translation exists people's interests in pursuit of excellent
translations (Williams, 2001:332). Till today, translation quality assessment still attracts great
attention. Throughout the history, several famous attempts have been made and theories
established in this field. Theories focused on both Micro-Level and Macro-Level have been
formed. For instance, famous scholars like Catford (1998) and his A Linguistic Theory of
Translation: an Essay in Applied Linguistics; Reiss (2000) and her Translation Criticism—the
Potentials and Limitations; Wilss (1982) and his The Science of Translation Problems and Methods.
All these works have discussed translation quality from the micro-level perspective, and most of
them utilized linguistic concepts as assessment criteria. While others like Nida (2003) and his
dynamism equivalence theory; Christinane Nord (1991) and her Scopos theory; Toury (1995) and
his Descriptive Translation Studies. Their works concentrate more on the macro-level. But all of
these theories tried to assess translation from different perspectives and approaches. Even
Venuti's (1995) Invisibility Theory contributed to this area. The variety and the scope of those
theories are very wide. Scholars have borrowed concepts from different subjects such as
linguistics, sociology, neurology, even psychology to examine "the relationship between source
text and target text"(House, 2001:243). However, "这些模式大都难以应用，理论方法和实际需
要之间存在鸿沟"(most of these models are difficult to apply, and there's a gap between
theories and practical requirements)(唐韧, 2011:40). Although some models like House's model
is more workable, and "undoubtedly there can be objective criteria for making a relevant
evaluation of a translation, but they have not yet been adequately recognized or systematically
established and described"( Reiss,2000:2), which means Quality assessment is still a relatively
new field ready to be exploit.
As an interesting and tricky area of translation, wordplay translation has always been the centre
of interests of translation quality assessment. There are a lot of articles dedicated to discuss the
translation quality by using various different assessment methods and suggest how they could be
better translated. For instance, Hans Grassegger (1985) once compared twelve versions of French
translation of Asterix comics in order to study its parody translation, and he concluded that

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parodies cannot be 'translated' but have to be recreated in the target culture in order to be as
good as the original (cited in Tabbert, 2002: 17). Riitta Oittinen (2000) did a similar study by
examining three different Finnish translations of wordplay in Alice in wonderland, and she
believed that norms are what affect the translation quality. However, very few studies have
looked at what factors as assessment criteria may affect the assessment results. And when
factors have been looked at, of all the theories and criteria, the time a book is translated are
often overlooked by scholars. For instance, Julian House (1977) mentioned time as an assessment
criterion, but she didn't elaborate more specifically for its effect on wordplay translation, nor did
she have any empirical studies to back up the theory in this specific field. It appears that very few
of the scholars have considered time as an important factor which may affect the translation
quality assessment results. If my assumption was proved to be correct, it will take assessment
quality theory one step closer to completeness. This is why I choose to study this topic as it is
believed that "翻译质量评估模式的完善将会对翻译市场起到极大的规范作用，并且有益于对
翻译行为的研究"( the consummation of the Translation Quality Assessment System will largely
standardize the translation market, and will help better understanding translation behavior)(李
曦,2010:27).
In this thesis, two relevant fields will be explained and studied in the Literature Review chapter:
previous studies of translation quality assessment approaches including their assessment criteria,
and wordplay types and its translation quality assessment. I will list major theories on translation
quality assessment and explain their assessment perspectives, methods and criteria. I will also
analyze their advantages and disadvantages in order to scrutinize if they have looked at time's
effect when assessing the translations. My analysis will also explain why House's TQA model was
chosen for this case study over the others. Chinese scholars' views and studies in this field will be
presented alongside as well in order to give a general picture of translation quality assessment on
specific language pair, namely English and Chinese. In the second part, I will elaborate wordplay
translation assessment issues, as well as the works related to it. I will also justify the wordplay
types and the materials I have chosen.
In the Methodology chapter, Julian House's Translation Quality Assessment Model will be

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introduced and the reason it is chosen will be re-iterated. How and why the book Alice in
Wonderland is chosen for this case study will be justified; how wordplay data is collected and its
meaning will be presented; how data is to be processed will be explained as well as how time's
effect might be assessed or presented in the assessment results will also be elaborated.
In chapter four, three translations will be assessed according to House's TQA model, after a
general statement of quality, the wordplay data collected will be explained and discussed in order
to test my assumption.
Results and findings will be presented in the final chapter.
A complete collection of wordplay data, its translation and its features will be presented in the
appendix forms.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review
In this chapter I will explain the previous studies on translation quality assessment, their main
theory, assessment criteria, and criticism against them. By doing so, I will present a more general
picture in this field of study in order to check if time has been considered as an assessment
criteria, and from what perspective it has been considered. Also, by illustrating different
approaches and criticism against them, it will eventually lead to explain why House's TQA model
is chosen as my main assessment method in studying times effects on translation qualities. In the
second part, I will discuss the text types and translation strategies of wordplay translation. The
reason translation strategies are involved is because the belief that when a special text type is
assessed, its translation strategies need to be looked at (Reiss, 2000:25-43). I will also present a
general review of the works of wordplay translation assessment on Alice in wonderland to see if
anyone has systematically studied the time's effect on wordplay translation quality assessment,
what their results are and how their study will be different from mine.
2.1 Different Approaches to Translation Quality Assessment and Their
Criteria
When we assess a translation, we are looking at translation criticism, or even more. Assess a
translation means to look at "the nature of translation, to be more specific, the nature of the
relationship between a source text and its translation text"(House, 2001:244). Before any formal
theory or approach was established, it was quite common for people to mix up literature criticism
and translation assessment. As a result, a translation was usually assessed as a literature, other
than a translation (Reiss, 2000:2). That was the early chaos before the "real" translation
assessment method took form.
2.1.1 Traditional Approaches
The earliest effort of real translation assessment might be the so called Mentalist methods. When
an assessment was made by this group, the evaluations are usually subjective and intuitive.
Judgements like "reads like an original", "translated fluently", or "sensitively translated" usually
came up as a result, which are very vague and unsupported (Reiss, 2000:2). Similar views were
held by Chinese scholar 严复(1898:5) who proposed three assessment criteria: 信，达，雅

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(faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance) but failed to give more specific standards as how
translation should be assessed according to each criterion.
This view has been promoted by neo-hermeneutic believers who regard translation as a "highly
individual creativity that highly depends on subjective interpretation and transfer
decisions"(House, 2001:244), which means they believe that text has no specific meaning but
depends on how it was interpreted by individuals. From today's point of view, this belief would
be close to ridiculous. Bühler (1998) in his book once argued and quoted by House (2001:244)
that "this method is no good in making arguments as to when, how and why a translation is
good".
Such critics like Dryden, Dolet and Tytler, were listed by Munday(2001) as pioneers in creating a
systematic approach to translation assessment. However, they did nothing more than repackage
the old content. They may rename the translation into "meta-phrase, paraphrase and
imitation"(Dryden, 1992:17), they still didn't come up with any concrete solutions as to what
criteria should be included in the assessment.
Then during the religious translation period, came out more specific criteria: literal translation vs.
free translation, an argument between Cicero and St. Jerome. It is usually called "word-for-word"
translation Vs "sense-for sense" translation. Cicero was a great supporter of literal translation.
This might because back then the judgement was very much affected by religion. Back then
people believed that the word of God has to be translated literally (Nida, 2001:2). For instance,
Martin Luther was accused because in his translation of the New Testament, he added one word
that doesn't have equivalence in the source text. (Munday, 2001:22). Although the conception
was proposed over a millennium ago, it remains popular in the 20th century. However, it is
argued that because of the language differences, it is impossible to find out a word with the exact
same meaning or structure in two very different languages, thus all translation is a process of
paraphrasing. So, in a sense, all translation is sense-for-sense translation (Nida, 2001: 2).
2.1.2 Receiver Perspective Approaches
Behaviouristic views are more "objective" when compared with mentalist views. They regard

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translation work as a product oriented process which is locked in a "black box" of the human
brain. So they believe it is no good to study the translation process but the "stimulus and
response" between the reader and translated texts (House, 2001:244). However, Nida criticised
this method as being "inadequate, for the conditioning features of human behaviour cannot be
readily controlled as are those of animals in mazes" (Nida, 1964:7).
Instead, by borrowing Noam Chomsky (1957)'s concept of "surface structure" and "deep
structure", which he believed that "we are not content to look upon a language as some fixed
corpus of sentences, but as a dynamic mechanism capable of generating an infinite series of
different utterances"(Nida, 1964:9), Nida created his famous assessment theory called
equivalence theory, which he further divided into two types, formal equivalence and dynamic
equivalence (Nida, 1964:159). By doing this, he successfully avoided the debate on free
translation vs. literal translation as he regarded every translation a way of paraphrasing. In Nida's
theory, readers are the test subjects; their response to a translation work forms the main
assessment criteria which Nida puts it in his book:
When the question of the superiority of one translation over another is raised, the
answer should be looked for in the answer to another question, 'best for whom'? The
relative adequacy of different translations of the same text can only be determined in
terms of the extent to which each translation successfully fulfils the purpose for which it
was intended. In other words, the relative validity of each translation is seen in the
degree to which the receptor are able to respond to its message (in terms of both form
and content) in comparison with (1) what the original author evidently intended would
be the response of the original audience and (2) how that audience did, in fact, respond.
The responses can, of course, never be identical, for inter-lingual communication always
implies some differences in cultural setting, with accompanying diversities in value
systems, conceptual presuppositions, and historical antecedents.
(Nida, 1976:64)
Nida believed that as an end product, a good translation should be as effective as the original,
which means, the manner in which receptors of a translation respond to the translation should
be "equivalent" to the manner in which the source text's receptors respond to the original, and in
order to do that, a translator "must go beyond mere comparisons of corresponding structures
and attempt to describe the mechanisms by which the total message is decoded, transferred and

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transformed into the structures of another language"(Nida, 1964:27). Thus the basis of formal
equivalence involves linguistic and grammatical structure study in order to analyze a
word-for-word shift, while the dynamic equivalence is more about evaluating translation from
reader's perspective and their preferred as Nida believe dynamic equivalence exceeds pure
linguistic concepts (Nord, 1997:5). Nida (1964) preferred dynamic equivalence, and looked at the
"intelligibility" and "informativeness" of a translation work, and if the work has transferred those
two features from the original work into the translation.
However, Nida's theory posed very practical problems as to how to evaluate a reader's response.
A work like the Bible, or Alice in wonderland could be written way back in time, and with the
general environment changing, how should a reader's response be measured? Should it be
confined in one country one language or in different languages; should cultural differences be
considered while assessing reader's response; should readers' own experiences or their general
informativeness of their times be considered. Nida's theory didn't answer or explain any of these
questions mentioned above. Nor did he give quantitative standards as to how to measure
reader's response as it is a more subjective feeling. In her article, House criticised Nida's theory
as being "impossible to measure an 'equivalent response,' let alone 'informativeness' or
'intelligibility'." (House, 2001:244). It further states that if none of these phenomena can be
measured, then they are meaningless and useless as translation evaluation criteria (ibid: 244).
Nida defend his method by stating that "every translator is allowed to speak for him/herself,
because as in any real human activity, complete objectivity is impossible"(Nida, 1964:29).
Although some techniques are designed to monitor readers' response to a translation, for
instance like reading aloud, close and rating procedures, etc, the success rates are very low,
because these techniques didn't include the original. The reason why the original was not
included was because of Nida's view on dynamic equivalence:
A translation of dynamic equivalence aims at complete naturalness of expression, and tries
to relate the receptor to modes of behaviour relevant within the context of his own culture;
it does not insist that he understand the cultural patterns of the source-language context in
order to comprehend the message.
(Nida, 1964:159)

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As the equivalence focuses on evaluating the translations native features and overlooks the
original work, it is impossible for dynamic equivalence to reveal the relations between the source
and the target translation work.
What's more, Newmark criticized that "the equivalence approach lacks consistency: some
scholars praise literalism as the optimum procedure in translation, while others, such as Koller,
allow a certain number of adaptive procedures, paraphrase or other non-literal procedures in
specific cases"(1984:16). Thus "these rather arbitrary criteria do not account for the fact that
implicit values should remain implicit in some cases, nor do they recognize that comprehensibility
is not a general purpose common to all texts or text-types"(Nord, 1997:8).
Nida's theory was also challenged by a Chinese scholar Hu (1993) who applied Nida's response
theory in an experiment, in which he had a few expressions in English and their translations in
Chinese, then he give them to the readers, and observe their response; he concluded that it is
impossible to have the same response simply because Chinese and English language has
completely different word order, and sentence structures.
2.1.3 Functionalist Approaches
This approach was first developed by Reiss in her book Translation Criticism—Possibilities and
Criticism on the bases of the equivalence based functional relationship between source and
target text (Nord, 1997:9). She later states further on that translators cannot solely rely on source
text analysis alone nor the features derived from it, instead they should decide the functionality
of the target text in a translational context by saying:
All types of translation mentioned may be justified in particular circumstances. And
interlinear version can be extremely useful in comparative linguistic research. Grammar
translation is a good aid to foreign language learning. Leaned translation is appropriate if
one wishes to focus on the different means whereby give meanings are verbally
expressed in different languages. And the changing of a text's function, as a verbal
component within a total communicative process, may also be a justified solution,
however, when the translation is an end in itself, in the sense of simply seeking to extend
an originally monolingual communicative process to include receivers in another language,
then it must be conceived as an integral communicative performance, which without any
extra-textual additions (notes, explanations etc) provides an insight into the cognitive

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meaning, linguistic form, and communicative function of the source language text.
(Reiss, 1989:114 in Nord, 1997:10)
At this point, a new functional approach was considered formed because Reiss pointed out more
criteria like text functions, extra-lingual additions, cognitive meaning, and linguistic form
including grammar, as well as communication function. Besides Katharina Reiss, its supporters
also include Vermeer, and Christiane Nord. They believed that the translation purpose or the so
called 'skopos' is very important to be included in evaluation of translation quality as judgement
criteria, which also includes how target culture affects a translation. This is because Vermeer
believed that the translation was required as a tool to transfer information with purpose, thus
the person commencing the translation makes decisions which would make the translation and
its quality fit to its function. Here translation is regarded as having a function to fulfil in the target
environment (House, 2001:245). It is also believed that the translation results reflects the
strategies used during translation (Nord, 1997:29). This is because the end product, as a
communication tool, its ultimate purpose is to assist its target reader to understand the original
writers' intention (Nord, 1997). This theory, just like Nida's, too has successfully avoid the debate
between word-for-word translation and sense-for-sense translation, as the theory believed a
good translation would fit its function, and utilize both techniques freely, or choose a proper
degree in between as the function requires (ibid:29). Gentzler had expressed his view of a good
translation from skopos point of view which is when the derivation is consistent with the original
skopos, could a translation be deemed faithful (Gentzler, 2001:72).
However, although "function" and "purpose" are considered important in assessing translation
qualities, they have never been made quantitative, not even elaborate in detail as to how they
could measure or judge the quality of a translation. It is not clear as how to decide if a translation
is equivalent or adequate, or how to analyze a skopos of a translation from a linguistic
perspective. Let alone of generating any satisfactory results. For instance, Nord criticised in his
book (1997:110-119) that the theory is flawed because not all translation has a purpose or
function. Sometimes, skopos theory even betrays the original, because it didn't pay enough
attention to the linguistic features of the source text (Munday, 2001:81). It is also being criticised

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by House (2001:245) that skopos theory regards the original work as a source of information,
which can be added or omitted during translation as the translator sees fit to its purpose, or
function. Thus, as all translations are related to its receptor cultural norms to a degree, skopos
theory can never be considered an adequate theory in judging a translation.
However, there are people like Nord and Reiss who tried to improve assessment criteria of
Skopos theory. For instance, Nord proposed a series of criteria in order to offset the linguistic
aspects criteria shortages of skopos theory. She proposed three guidelines for translation, namely
"translation brief", "source text analysis" and "the functional hierarchy of translation problems"
(Nord, 1997:59-67). The translation brief was meant to help translators get a tone of the function
of the text, its communication purposes, targeted readers, prospective time and places, and the
motive of text production. Here, Nord for the first time, included time as an assessment criteria,
however, she only meant time as a technical requirement concerning capacity. Her example was
that if a translation is need for a limited period of time, for instance a commercial brochure for a
project, then it should be confined to certain pages(ibid:67). Although she didn't relate time to
translation quality assessment results, this is a start.
Nord further clearly stated that "the basis for the evaluation of a translation is the adequacy or
inadequacy of the solutions found for the translation problems" (Nord, 1997:74). She further
recognized four types of errors and their solutions which include pragmatic, cultural, linguistic,
and text-specific translation errors. She accentuated that it is not enough to just analyze the
problems, but studies on text function and purpose as well as a clear definition of translation
units should be regarded as the core of the quality assessment criteria and they are very helpful
in solving these translation problems (Nord, 1997). However, it is still unclear as how exactly the
"adequacy" or "inadequacy" of a translation can be assessed.
Reiss in her book (2000) developed more specific translation assessment criteria for functionalist
approach. She stated that text type should be taken into consideration during translation quality
assessment, because as different text types have different functions or purposes, they require
different assessment criteria, which would lead back to different translation strategies. Reiss
classified four different text types: "content-focused text, form-focused text, appeal-focused text

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and audio-medial text"(Reiss, 2000:25-43). She argues that each text has a very different feature
which would in turn need different translation strategies, and assessment criteria. For instance,
content-focused text is usually more depictive, form-focused text expressive, and appeal-focused
text persuasive (ibid: 25-43). This is the first time in assessment history a text type concept has
been proposed, and lead to much more objective and measurable criteria in translation quality
assessment. Her approach for the first time includes text types that are outside literature and
connect translation strategies with assessment criteria. However, Snell-Hornby (1995:30)
criticized her model as being too stiff to cope with the real world text type complexity. Yet, we
cannot deny the significance of this attempt in specifying assessment criteria.
Similar views on text type was hold by Chinese scholar 范守义(1987)(listed in 李曦,2010:30), who
analyzed translations quantitatively according to relevance degree. The core value is the
credibility of a translation and sentence was regarded as a translation unit. He recognized nine
criteria among them are text types and paronomasia meaning of words, namely wordplay.
2.1.4 Text-related Approaches
This approach mainly focuses on the translation text as its name suggests. A translation is
evaluated within the target culture regarding its form and function. Its representative theory is
Toury(1995)'s Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS). This study doesn't judge a translation by
comparing it with translation standards; on the contrary, it compares a translation with its foreign
counterparts in the target culture, looks at it from a local perspective, and describes its feature as
it is. After analysis and feature description, factors that may lead to the final results were
established, analyzed and studied. Thus, the original work was not regarded as highly important.
However, this approach was criticized as impractical as the criteria are usually based on a large
quantity of empirical data collection and study. This theory was never backed by a
"comprehensive" enough study in order to prove it is usable. Another problem with this theory,
according to House, is that "a translation cannot be compared as if it were an independent, new
product of the target culture" (House, 2001:245), this alone, will sabotage the assessment results.
Despite this theory taken the target cultural norms (micro level) and the target culture
background (macro level) into the context judgement consideration, it never gives out specific

18
criteria as to how to judge what a good translation is (ibid: 246). Not to mention, according to its
norms, a translation needs to be proved a genuine translation other than an adaptation or an
original pretending to be translation before it can be assessed. However, there were no criteria or
methods as to how to prove a translation is a genuine one.
Other than DTS, there are other linguistic perspective opinions on translation quality assessment,
such as Catford(1998), Reiss(2000), Wilss(1982) etc. In their early works, they offered criteria to
look at; however, the process was not systematic, but rather sporadic. Later on, there are
Baker(1992), Hatim and Mason(1997), Hickey(1998), they have made practical contributions to
translation text studies. Although they did not directly relate their theories to translation quality
assessment, they did widen the possibilities of assessing translations from different perspectives
such as linguistics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, stylistics and discourse analysis (House,
2001:246).
2.1.5 Cultural-based Approaches
Cultural based approaches assess translations from a more broad sense. It involves target
language cultural settings, histories and its conventions.(Lefevere and Bassnett, 1990:11). They
argued in the book (1990) that different cultures may stress different strategies in translation
when dealing with different text types, so translation is an activity that both depends on target
cultural norms as well as its source language cultural norms to function (ibid: 8).
This new trend of translation assessment was described as "cultural turn" by Gentzler (2001:47)
who regarded translation as an interaction between two cultures other than an activity merely
between two languages (Gentzler, 2001:190). In cultural based translation studies, Venuti
contributed to this field notably. He assessed translations in the sense of "domestication" and
"foreignization" (1995). In his book Translator's Invisibility, he defined "domestication" as "bring
the writer close to the reader", which means the translator would try set up a background in the
book that is very familiar to the target reader in order for the work to be more easily understood
despite cultural differences, while "foreignization" as to "bring the reader closer to the writer" by
presenting the foreignness without compromise, namely maintain the original form and style
(ibid: 148). Venuti supports "foreignization" by claiming that a good translation shouldn't be

19
transparent or fluent if these features were obtained by sacrificing the foreignness. He believed
that the translator's position should be visible in the translation works (Venuti, 1995).
Although Venuti's theory provided new insights into translation quality assessment by looking at
translation quality from a cultural perspective, his supporting of foreignness seemed too extreme
to other academics. For instance, Berman criticised his view as being radical, and that "the
readers may not appreciate or even feel weird about the foreignness if presented too much in the
translation work"(cited in Venuti, 2002: 276-289).
2.1.6 Register-based Approaches
This approach was sometimes called discourse-based approach. It is different from other
approaches; this is because this approach proposed by House looks at the context and register of
a translation. This approach "draws on pragmatic theory, on Halliday's functional and systematic
theory, on notions developed inside the Prague school of languages and linguistics, on register
theory and stylistics as well as discourse analysis. It also based on the notion of 'equivalence'"
(House, 1997:29). House suggested that the essence of translation is to maintain the "meaning"
of the text intact while transfer from one language into another. Here, the "meaning" includes
semantic, pragmatic and textual aspects (House, 1977:40). Thus, House upgraded Crystal and
Davy's Model to explain her situational-functional text analysis and assessment methods, she
divided all the criteria into two general categories: A---Dimensions of Language User and B---
Dimensions of Language Use. A concerns the writer while B is about the work its self. Thus, A is
further divided into three sub-criteria: Geographical Origin, Social Class, Time; B includes:
Medium: Simple/Complex, Participation: Simple/complex, Social Role relationship, Social Attitude,
Province (House, 1977, 42). "至少从目前所掌握的文献来看，这是国际翻译批评界第一个具有
完整的理论和实证的翻译质量评估模式"(This is the first time ever, a complete theoretical
translation quality assessment being systematic and backed up by concrete data) (李曦, 2010: 28).
That's the reason this model is chosen in order to study times effect on translation quality
assessment results. However, this does not mean that House's theory is perfect. Some Chinese
Scholar has criticised that because the case studies in her paper was between German and
English, it may not be suitable for assess translations between Chinese and English. But House's

20
model was proved to be suitable by many dissertations which studies the application of House's
model in assessing Chinese-English translations, according to the researcher, the results are
always positive. For instance, Jia (2010) has studied House's TQA Model's application to Chinese
English translation in her dissertation and concluded that it is suitable for assessing translations
between Chinese and English.
2.2 Wordplay types and Translation Approaches
As Reiss and 范守义 both include text type or paronomasia text as a criteria for translation
assessment, it is important to explain historical views on wordplay types and their translation
strategies in order to assess wordplay translation.
Delia Chiaro defined wordplay as "every conceivable way in which language is used with the
intent to amuse"(1992:2). Delabastita developed this concept one step further by saying that
"wordplay is a textual phenomenon which is exploited both in linguistic structures and meanings
in order to bring about a communicatively significant confrontation between the form and the
meaning" (1996:128). Weaver (1964) recognized three types of wordplay: "the proper names,
parodies, and puns" (Weaver, 1964:80).
Delabastita (1996) agreed Weaver's classification of wordplay and went on to distinguish 4 types
of pun translations. They are: “Homonymy (same sound and writing), Homophony (same sound),
Homograph (same writing), Paronymy (similar form)” (ibid:128). However, as far as wordplay is
concerned, there are three types of 'Pun' should be added to the list: Polysemy (one word has
different but related senses), Malapropism means “the incorrect usage of a word, usually with
comic effect” (de Vries & Verheij, 1997:72-76), Simile (a comparison of two unlike things using
like or as) (leasttern.com).
According to this classification, puns are clearly proved to be a kind of wordplay that largely
depends on the sound, the form and the meaning of a word. Thus it is the most difficult to
translate as Mateo believed that Universal jokes are the most easy to translate, while linguistic
jokes, the most difficult (1994:128). This is because, according to House, "wordplay, as a type of
form-oriented text, its meaning is attached to the form, and form are impossible to be

21
re-expressed in another language system, thus, meaning cannot be re-expressed, but by other
ways, such as paraphrase, or commentary" (House, 1997:48). Although House excluded wordplay
analysis from her case study, she still argued that with this type of text, usually "the
foregrounding is subject to communication", which means the expression itself is not important,
but their function is, which is to draw addressee's attention, in other words, it is the meaning
should be transferred other than the form. However, Hans Grassegger thinks otherwise. In his
book (1985) he systematically studied wordplay translation and concluded that it is not
equivalents of content that translators have to look for, but equivalents of form (cited in Tabbert,
2002: 319).
What's more, Delabastita even provided a more systematic translation strategy targeting pun
translation. He suggested 8 basic types of solutions in dealing with pun translation (Delabastita
1996:134).
Delabastita also suggested that for parody translation, similar strategies can be considered
(ibid:138), which means the translator could find a similar verse in the original culture and
parody it the same way like the author did. This is because that it is argued that without knowing
the original parody verse, a parody cannot be appreciated. For instance, Raphaelson-West
argued that "the piece of literature being parodied needs to be commonly known in order for the
parody to be effective"(1989:134). However not everyone agrees with this argument, Milner
(1903) concluded after a study on the popularity of Alice in Wonderland after its time, that the
original verse fades with time, and most of the readers never heard of the original verse by the
time Alice got popular, and this didn't affect the fact that the parodies in Alice are popular among
its readers, to whom the parody might be the only verse they know other than the original. He
believed that it is the parody itself, its rhythm, its content and the way it is presented that really
matters. His conclusion could be used by the translators; as such they could concentrate more on
how to create a better rhythm for a parody translation instead of how to convene the real
meaning of it.

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Chapter 3 Methodology
This thesis mainly studies if time should be considered when assessing translation quality, and
how it affects Translation quality assessment results. Assumption was made that under the same
translation model, because of the difference in the time when the translation is produced, the
assessment results may be different. By finding out more about translation quality assessment, it
may lead to a better understanding of the field, and benefit translation markets as a whole.
In order to study this assumption, translation need to be assessed, thus a model is needed. Here I
choose to use House's TQA model, not only because her model is so far the most complete
systematic translation quality assessment model, but also because her assessment method
covers both macro and micro level and provides both qualitative and quantitative criteria. This
point has been justified in the Literature Review by analyzing different approaches throughout
history. In this chapter I will illustrate certain concepts, as well as why the data is selected, how
the data is collected, and how it will be analyzed, TQA model will be explained in detail.
3.1 House's TQA Model and Data Analysis
The main method for data analysing is by using House's TQA model to assess chosen translation
versions, and discuss the results in order to discover if there was any differences, and if they are
caused by time differences.
As I explained in the Literature review, House's model is largely register based. She gave eight
different assessing criteria, which are Geographical Origin, Social Class, Time, Medium:
Simple/Complex, Participation: Simple/complex, Social Role relationship, Social Attitude, and
Province (House, 1977, 42). Later in her revised model she further developed her model into a
more systematic one relating to the field, tenor, and mode of texts (House, 1997:108).
The following map will illustrate House's model clearly:

23
"FIELD: refers to the nature of the social action that is taking place, namely the field of activity,
topic, and content of the text or its subject matter.
TENOR: refers to who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, the addresser and the
addressees, and the relationship between them in terms of social power and social distance, as
well as the 'degree of emotional charge' in the relationship between addresser and addressees
(Halliday 1978:33 cited in House 1997:109).
MODE: refers to both the spoken and written (which can be either simple or complex), and the
degree to which potential or real participation is allowed for between the interlocutors."
(House, 1997:108)
Clearly, from the form above, I will analyze both the original work and chosen translations and
compare them according to above criteria. By analyzing each criterion, the results of quality
assessment will be presented along the way, and also decide if the translation is a covert
translation or an overt translation. According to House, an overt Translation refers to a transaltion
which is obviously not target reader-oriented. It is a "second original". (House, 1997: 66). While a
covert translaiton is a translation that enjoys freedom and a translation that doesn't read like a
translation, like a recreation of the original in another language (ibid: 69). And later results will be
discussed to see if there's any differences between the three, and if they were caused by time.

24
As for the selection or reorganization of wordplay in Alice in Wonderland, there were plenty of
work that has looked at wordplay types and places in the book, the wordplay data mainly
collected according to Weaver's Alice in many tongues, and Gardner's the Annotated Alice.
Because my study mainly concentrates on time's effect on wordplay translation quality
assessment, I will directly use authoritative and justified work which pointed out almost every
one of the wordplay in Alice in wonderland. Wordplay data will be listed in the Data Collection
session. The analyzed wordplays will be presented in appendix in the form.
The concrete method of data collection is that according to recognized wordplay, I read the
original work to find the wordplays and then look for their corresponding wordplays in the
translated works. Then list and mark them with its page number in each book. The form will be
provided in Appendix. After assessing the whole book and its criteria, the results will be
discussed while looking at specific wordplay translation.
3.2 Data Selection
As I have stated before that text type was considered an important part during translation
assessment, scholars such as Reiss, House, and 范守义 all made their effort in distinguishing
different text types as it is believed that different text type require different translation strategies
and thus will need a different translation assessment method (Reiss, 2000:25-43).
The sample chosen in this thesis is wordplay in Alice in wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll, a
Victorian children's book, famous for its translation difficulty as it is full of wordplays. For
instance Weaver alone recognized five types of wordplay in Alice in wonderland. A Chinese
Scholar has also recognized this feature by saying "…虽然庄士敦曾把全书口译给末代皇帝爱新
觉罗·溥仪听过，却一直未见有中译本问世。其原因是：书里头顽（玩）字的笑话太多，本
来已经是似通的不通，再翻译了变成不通的不通了，所以没有人敢动它…" (…although
Reginald F. Johnston has told Puyi, the last Emperor of China, the story, but its Chinese written
version never came out. The reason was that the story is full of jokes playing on words, which
makes the story seem nonsense even in English, if translated into Chinese, which would be to
translate the nonsense into nonsense, so no one would dare to do so…).

25
As for wordplay definition, types and translation strategies, I have already covered these in the
Literature Review. Here, I re-iterate wordplay types which are: puns, parodies and proper names.
The book as a novel is depictive while the text type of wordplay is obviously form-oriented as I
have justified in the literature review.
Translation versions are chosen mainly depending on the time they were produced. Three
versions are chosen: 《阿丽思漫游奇境记》(Alice in Wonderland)by 赵元任(Zhao)(1922)，《爱
丽丝漫游奇境记》(Alice in Wonderland)by 王永年(Wang)(2000),《爱丽丝奇境历险记》(Alice's
Adventure in Wonderland)by 吴钧陶(Wu)(2010). These three translators are famous Chinese
translators, and their works are widely recognized as representatives of its time. Plus, the time
they are translated are in 1922, 2000, and 2010 respectively. I choose them on purpose as to
study another element, time differences. My assumption is: the bigger the time difference is, the
more effect is has on translation quality assessment results. The time differences between the
three works are 79 years and 10 years. The two differences are large enough to see if there's any
different effect on translation quality assessment results.
3.3 Data Collection---Wordplay in Alice in Wonderland
There are 22 proper names (characters), 39 puns, and 9 parodies in Alice in wonderland
according to weaver (1964) and Martin Gardner (2000). 39 puns covered almost all the pun types
recognized.
The Proper names are as follows:
Alice, the main character in the book, a little girl who experienced strange things underground,
and the word originated from greek meaning truth, or without madness.
The White Rabbit, the character lead Alice to wonderland
Dinah the Cat: Alice's cat, it was mentioned in a few times
The Mouse: a creature Alice met in the pool

26
DoDo: appeared in chapter three; it is an extinct bird, which was about the size of a swan,
covered with down instead of feathers, with short, strong legs, and wings too small for flight;
also means a stupid person. The pronunciation of this word fits the writer's name, Dodgson.
The Eaglet: a representation of Alice's sister Edith in real life
Lory: a representation of Alice's elder sister Lorina in real life
The Duck: a creature Alice met in the pool
Pat: appeared as a helper in the White Rabbit House
Mary Ann: the White Rabbit's maid
Bill the lizard: another helper in the White Rabbit House
The Caterpillar: a creature Alice met in the forest
The Duchess: a character Alice met in the kitchen
The Cheshire cat: a cat appeared in chapter six, the expression came from a place called Cheshire,
a big place in England and there was a breed of cat goes with the idiom: "grin like a Chesire cat".
The March Hare: the hare is said to be mad in March as they enter mating season.
The Hatter: in Britain, there's a saying as mad as a hatter, but the origin of the phrase is unknown.
I think mad as a hatter came about from hat makers using mercury and becoming poisoned from
it over time which made them insane.
The Dormouse: a type of sleeping mouse went to stupor during winter. This is a type of mouse
which is usually found in houses, different from those in fields (field mouse). They eat nuts,
suggesting the squirrel of present-day slang or the American species to which it is most closely
related. It goes into a stupor during cold weather. Dormire in Latin means to sleep, while there's
no need to explain the rest of the word.

27
The King/Queen/Knave of Hearts: characters Alice met in the garden
Gryphon: Gryphon is the original spelling of griffin. It is a mythical creature with eagle head and
lion body.
The Mock Turtle: to mock means to make fun of others; it is a sad character appeared in chapter
nine.
39 puns were grouped into 7 subtypes: Homonymy, homophony, Homograph, paronymy,
polysemy, malapropism, simile.
Homonymy(5):
The fall-20, great girl-25, this is the driest thing I know-32, learning to draw…What did they
draw…They draw the treacle from…they draw the treacle from-76-77, they were in the well, they
were…well in-77.
Homophony(2):
Tale-tail-35, Axis-axes-63
Homograph(5)
Explain yourself…I can't explain myself…I am not myself…I am not myself, you see-50, mustard
mine…mine…the more there is of mine the less there is of yours-91, at dinn-…where din
maybe…101, I am a poor man…poor speaker-112, before she had this fit…you never had
fits…then the words don't fit you-120-121
Paronymy(9)
Cats eat bats-bats eat cats-20, I had not!...A knot!-37, pig, or fig?-68, tortoise…he taught us-95,
lessons…lessen-97, whiting…it does the boots and the shoes…are done with whiting-102, soles
and eels-102, porpoise…purpose-102, I hadn't begun my tea-twinkling of the tea-…it began with

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the tea…of course twinkling begins with a T…-111
Polysemy(9)
By being drowned in my own tears-29, an old crab…the patience of an oyster-38, grow up…grown
up-41, time…to beat time-73, off with their heads…are their heads off? Their heads are gone-83,
flamingos and mustard both bite-90, either you or your head must be off…-92, we went to school
every day…I have been to a day school too-96, old crab-97
Malapropism(6)
Antipathies-19, curiouser and curiouser!-24, realing and writhing-96, ambition, distraction,
uglification and derision-96, mystery, seaography, drawling, stretching and fainting in coil-97,
laughing and grief-97
Simile(3)
Shut up like telescope-22, in my going out altogether, like a candle-22, I'm opening like the largest
telescope-24,
Puns and their explanations are listed in Appendix II.
Nine parodies are: How Doth the Little Crocodile; You are Old, Father William; Speak Roughly to
Your Little Boy; Twinkle Twinkle, Little Bat; The Lobster Quadrille; The Voice of The Lobster; Turtle
Soup; The Tarts; The Letter in The Trial
As it is impossible to study and compare all the parodies, three most famous parodies was
chosen to be included in the study which are: How Doth the Little Crocodile; You are Old, Father
William; and Twinkle Twinkle, Little Bat (Gardner, 2000: 213-242).

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Chapter 4 Data Analysis and Discussion
In this chapter, I will use House's TQA model to analyze and compare both the original and three
translations, after reaching assessment results, results will be compared for differences, and
discussed to see if it was caused by time.
4.1 Source Text Analysis
Alice in Wonderland is a Victorian children's book written by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under
the pseudonym Lewis Carroll and published in 1865. It has been one of the most popular
children's stories translated into more than 70 languages. And it is very famous for its translation
difficulty due to its abundant wordplay.
Field: This book has twelve chapters and tells a story of a girl named Alice falling into an
underground world after chasing a rabbit down a rabbit hole, where she experiences surreal
events that cannot happen in the real world. The story starts with Alice trying to find a way
through a very small door to the garden. She drank a liquid and shrank to the suitable size only to
find out she forgot the key, then she ate a cake and became very large. After crying a pool of
tears, where she almost drowned, she shrank again. She met many creatures who can talk English
while swimming in the pool, and they had a meeting about how to get dry after they were on
land. Later Alice's talking of her Cat Dian scared away all the creatures. She was sent to the
Rabbit's house to get gloves as the Rabbit mistook her for his maid Marry Ann. She grew big
again in the house and after kicking Bill out of the chimney; she ate cakes and shrank again. She
ran into a forest and met a caterpillar who told her to eat mushrooms. She did, and again her
height changed. Later she encountered the Duchess, Cheshire cat, participated a mad tea party, a
croquet match with the Queen of hearts, listened to Mock Turtle's story and ended up in a court
room where an investigation about stolen tarts was taking place. She finally woke up from the
dream.
This story was made up by the author for three young girls on a boat trip in Oxford, UK during
Victorian times. The author himself was a mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon, and
photographer at Oxford University. The story was narrated by the author in a nonsense way. The

30
story is full of fears of growing up, and threats of death (Gardner, 2000:203).
Lexical means: The book contains many proper names. This data has been listed in the
Methodology Chapter. For example: Pat, The Cheshire Cat, The March Hare, The Hatter, The
Gryphon, and The Mock Turtle.
Syntactical means: The conversation part in the story was in present tense, the other parts are all
written in past tense, using words like "Alice signed", "there was", "Alice began", etc. The story
was written to be read, all the conversations are indicated as verbal process by using words like
"replied", "said", "asked". Also, the book highlighted the perception using verbs such as
"thought", "guess", "suppose", etc.
Textual Means: The text will have to be read out aloud to maintain its coherency due to its
abundance in wordplay, especially puns which have same sound different form and meaning.
They add obscurity to the comprehension of the text.
For instance, Alice listened to the mouse's story:
"'Mine is a long and a sad tale!' said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing.
'It is a long tail, certainly,' said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse’s tail; “but why do
you call it sad?”
… …
'You are not attending!' said the Mouse to Alice, severely. 'What are you thinking of?'
'I beg your pardon,' said Alice very humbly: 'you had got to the fifth bend, I think?'
'I had not!' cried the Mouse, sharply and very angrily.
'A knot!' said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously about her. 'Oh, do
let me help to undo it!'"
(Carroll, 1993::14-15)
In this section, if the sound of the word is not involved, it is definitely very difficult for readers to
understand why the mouse is talking about a story, while Alice is talking about mouse's body part;
and why mouse meant he hadn't got to the fifth bend while Alice was talking about undo a knot.
When sound is considered, it became obvious, because of the similarities in the sound, they miss
understood each other. This could be very difficult to transfer into Chinese, as their counterpart

31
words in Chinese sound very dissimilar.
Tenor: This includes author's temporal, geographical, social provenance as well as his intellectual
emotional or affective stance (House, 1997:109).
The author is an academic scholar in various subject fields living in Victorian England.
Lexical means: Victorian concepts or phrase, such as afternoon tea, you fellows, how dreadfully
savage!
Textual means: Old spelling such as do'n't, ca'n't
The author's personal stance was that he originally created this story on a boat trip with three
young daughters of the Dean of Christchurch. Among them, Alice is the original model of the
protagonist of the story. The author created a lot of chaotic jokes based on wordplays, especially
in his parodies, for instance, "father William", which was originally a children's song advising
children to behave on moral grounds, was adapted into a joke literature making fun of the
original.
Lexical means: Wordplay based on forms, sound, and meaning.
Textual means: Poetic rhymes, for instance in father Williams, the word white rhymes right, fat,
that; son rhymes none; etc.
Social role relationship
Author-reader: Alice in Wonderland is a story made up for children to read, however, it is
enjoyed by adults too because of its wordplay jokes. His work is intelligent and humours, while
trying to get readers involved by creating conflicts and misunderstandings between his characters
using wordplay. He also entertains his readers by presenting parody poems, which both Alice and
the reader would have known the original. In the book, Alice was confused, yet readers recognise
the parodies.

32
Author-Character in story: Carroll created some characters in this book, yet did not give them
specific descriptions. However some of the character, because of their name have specific
meaning under the context, only people understand the culture might understand why these
character appear with certain characteristics. For instances, Hatter and March Hare appeared in
Chapter Seven Mad Tea Party. The cultural background was that this breed of rabbit would
behave madly in march as they turn mature and in heat. As for Hatters, they use to turn mad
because of this chemical involved in hat making. Yet although they talk madly and misunderstood
each other because of the author's wordplay, the author gave them serious personalities to
sharpen the contrast and satirical sense.
Alice-other characters: Alice tried to behave nicely like a Victorian girl, but because of all the
misunderstandings she had with other creatures in wonderland, she became angry and rude
sometimes. Plus creatures in wonderland don't use much phatic language or even have the
concept, and treat Alice as an outsider. For example in chapter three, when Dodo proposed a
"caucus-race", and stopped as if hoping someone would ask for further information; only Alice
complied with the scene. Another example in Chapter Seven would be when Alice is approaching
the table; the dormouse shouted that "no room!" which is not how people would treat others in
Victorian times.
Syntactic means: Interrupted sentences "for the immediate adoption of more energetic
remedies-" "Speak English!"; "I don't think----" "then you shouldn't talk!"
Textual means: The text is coherent in general, but Alice's talk about Dian, her cat, and her
misunderstandings caused by wordplay just make the conversation impossible to go on.
Social Attitude:
The book uses typical Victorian formal languages but doesn't have etiquettes involved. The
protagonist Alice behaves well like a Victorian girl yet asks too many questions which are not
appropriate in the social etiquettes. The poem parodied in the book was pedagogical and
moralistic children's song, giving the book satirical sense.

33
Mode:
Medium: The medium is simple; this book is written to be read privately or aloud.
Phonological means: The words to be emphasized are using italic style; the name of the parodies,
proper names was stressed by capitalizing the first letter; some special names or marks like
"Orange Marmalade" "Drink Me" was not only capitalized but also printed in changed font.
Textual means: Some of the wordplay or logical jokes need to be read to understand, but in
general, the text is coherent.
Participation: The participation is complex; there is monologue narration as well as dialogue
between characters.
Genre: This book is a mixed type. It is a Victorian Children's book yet it is satirical instead of being
pedagogical and moralistic. The poems chosen to be parodied are famous for children of the time.
Due to its wordplay and logical jokes, this book was also classified as non-sense literature.
Lecercle once commented that this book contains extreme qualities of both traditional and
folklore, poetic and childish, high and low (1994:197).
Statement of Function:
Being both a children's literature and a non-sense literature, Alice attracted both children and
adult readers, the ideational function of this book is to tell a story about Alice's adventure stories
in wonderland. The interpersonal function is marked: the writer, the protagonist of the story Alice,
and the English used in the book is Victorian; the story is classified as children's literature and
nonsense literature due to writer's imagination, wordplay as well as logical jokes. In the book, the
author showed his satirical view on educational poems by parodying them. The textual function
is marked by using English language as a means of making jokes, or creating confusion.
4.2Comparison of Original and Translation
In order to avoid repetition, I will mainly point out mismatches of the translation work, namely

34
the differences between the original and the translation.
4.2.1 Zhao's Alice in Wonderland
Field: A story about a girl named 阿丽思 and her experience in wonderland.
Textual means: The translator used some skills specific to the traits of Chinese Language to deal
with difficulties met when translating wordplay jokes in order to make the translation make sense
in Chinese.
For instance, the same part when Alice listened to the mouse's story:
"'Mine is a long and a sad tale!' said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing.
'It is a long tail, certainly,' said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse’s tail; “but
why do you call it sad?”
… …
'A knot!' said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously about her.
'Oh, do let me help to undo it!'"
(Carroll, 1993:14-15)
那老鼠对着阿丽思叹了一口气道，“唉！我的历史说来可真是又长又苦又委屈呀，”
阿丽思听了，瞧着那老鼠的尾巴说，“你这尾是曲啊！可是为什么又叫它苦呢！”
。。。。。。
那老鼠说到这里，对阿丽思很严厉地道，“你不用心听着，你想到哪去啦？”
阿丽思很谦虚地道，“对不住，对不住。你说到了第五个弯弯儿嘞，不是吗？”那老
鼠很凶很怒地道，“我没有到！”
阿丽思道，“你没有刀吗？让我给你找一把罢！”（阿丽思说着四面瞧瞧，因为她总喜
欢帮人家的忙。）
(The mouse signed and saying to Alice "ah, my history is long sad and wronged,"
Alice looked at the mouse's tail said:" your tail is curvy, but why do you call it sad?"
… …
The mouse stopped and said to Alice seriously:"you are not listening attentively, what
you are thinking about?"
Alice said humbly:"sorry sorry, you are at the 5th
turn, aren't you?" the mouse said to
Alice angrily "I haven't!"
Alice said:" you don't have a knife? Let me find you one!" (She's looking around while
saying this, because she is always willing to help others out.)
（Zhao, 1922: 20-21）

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Here, 历史 means tale, because it is nearly impossible to connect 历史 with 尾巴(tail) in Chinese
language, the translator gave it another similar adjective 委屈(wronged) which sounds exactly
like 尾曲(zigzag tail). Then Zhao make Alice asking" the tail is indeed zigzag, but why call it sad?"
As for the "knot" joke, the translator made up his own version, because 到 and 刀 have the same
sound in Chinese, here, the translator concentrate on transfer the meaning instead of translate
the words.
Tenor: The translator was educated in China for a bachelor degree, and then became the second
group of people in China first sent to the US to study. Graduated with a PHD, he came back to
China to teach Morden Language, General Linguists and Chinese Phonological Studies in Tsinghua
University. He has a great talent in language and phonology. He mastered French, German,
English, besides that, He has a profound understanding of his mother tongue, Chinese. He was
considered "the father of Chinese linguistics study". And by the time he, for the first time,
translated Alice in wonderland into Chinese in 1921, Chinese language was in a transition state
from ancient to modern. He tried to replace unfamiliar western concepts with Chinese
counterparts, and gave the story a strong Chinese scene. And his parody is extremely rhyming
and the form is close to an ancient Chinese poem, this makes his parody form very similar to that
of the original. By altering the word, his parody also presented the ironic sense, although his
readers would not know about the original verse which was being parodied.
Lexical means: A lot of complicated characters used as interjections: 罢，嘞，唉，喔，呵 etc. using
Chinese words like 新年，田场，蝙蝠子，火筷子，冰淇淋，芝麻酱，etc to replace words like
"Christmas, field, bat, red-hot poker, toffee, hot buttered toast" respectively, with 儿 at the end of
a word, the translator render the story in Beijing dialect, omitted word like "tunnel" during
translation as there was no such concepts in Chinese.
Syntactic means: Some sentences are very casually written, close to colloquial phrase. Such as 不
碍事，还掘苹果呢，你这笨鹅！etc. Also, according to Chinese habit, description of status are
always been placed before a direct quote.

36
The relationship between the author-translator and reader is marked: the translator uses very
Beijing styled words, concepts and non-formal or even colloquial expressions to translate
conversations and certain concepts that were not familiar to the readers at his time. By doing this,
he tried to make his reader feel as close to the story as possible, as if it were a local story. But he
didn't try to replace the cultural specific elements in the book with equivalent Chinese culture.
For instance he preserved words like "miles, pence," other than replace them with "kilometres,
or Chinese Li (half kilometre), fen." And the mouse's story of William the Conqueror was
re-expressed in ancient Chinese to stress that the mouse was seriously talking.
Mode: The emphasis was changed from using italics into using dots marked under the Chinese
character. And some font change was accordant with the original book, some are not. For
instance, "Orange Marmalade" has a font change while in the translation it doesn't.
Genre: The text was classified as children's book, foreign literature.
Statement of Quality: This translation tried to use Beijing dialect and very colloquial expression
to make it sound more like a recreation of the original in Chinese other than a "second original",
translator's efforts marked this translation to be an obvious covert translation. Although there
are no omissions or additions to the content, the author still made his own adaption when it
comes to wordplay translation, just like the example listed above. The language used in the
translation is less formal than the original.
4.2.2 Wang's Alice in Wonderland
Field: A story about a girl named 爱丽丝 and her experience in wonderland.
Textual means: The translator translated wordplay into Chinese literally as they were written in
English, without explaining most of them. There are 14 footnotes in the book, among them 8
footnotes were related to explaining pun used in the book. Others are used to explain cultural
related items, for instance footnote on page 88 "英语中有 as mad as a march hare, 意味疯的像
是三月（交尾期）里的野兔(in English there's a saying 'as mad as a march hare', means being as
crazy as rabbit in March, because that’s when they enter mating season ". However, it is not yet

37
clear as how or why the author only chose to explain very few puns instead of all of them.
Tenor: The translator is educated in China; graduated from Shanghai St. John's University
majored in English and Chinese Studies. Later was sent to work abroad as editor, translator, and
proof-reader. He mastered English, Russian, Spanish, and Italian. The translator was born in 1927,
that's 6 years after Zhao translated Alice, and by the time he started to study language, basic
modern Chinese language system has already been set up. He translated Alice in 2000 under the
request of 肖毛. In his translation, he tried to maintain the original style of the book, he used
equally formal words and expressions like the original, but his parody is less in rhythm, and more
like a prose compared to the original. This might be a result of modern Chinese language
affection.
Lexical means: The word used as interjections are much simpler, there is no complicated Chinese
characters. The concepts confined to English culture are kept as well, such as圣诞(Christmas), 太
妃糖(Toffee),热的黄油土司(hot-buttered toast). The language is standard Chinese, without any
dialect characteristics. Although this book was intended for children, he still used some high
sense vocabulary such as"贸然行事(do something without thinking), 筋疲力尽(tired out), 乏味
(a more advanced way of saying boring)" etc.
Syntactic means: Here, in this translation, Chinese sentence structure was more relaxed, the
description part goes both in front of as well as after a direct quotation. Compared to the original,
sentence order didn't change so much.
The relation between the author-translator and reader is not marked: The author used very
standard Chinese and very formal language and phrases thus kept the original style. The
translator tried to make sure the reader is looking at the exact translation of the original version.
Although he explained some puns in the translation, others were not explained, and thus very
easy to cause confusion for the reader. For instance:

38
(Carroll, 1993:14-15)
"你不专心听!" 老鼠严厉地对爱丽丝说，：你在想什么?"
"请你原谅,"爱丽丝十分恭敬地说,"你已经讲到第五道弯了吗?"
"没有!"老鼠非常生气地尖声地嚷道。
"什么?一个结头!"爱丽丝时刻准备帮别人的忙，她急切地四下张望。"哦，让我帮你
解开吧!"
("You are not attending!" The mouse said seriously to Alice, "what are you thinking?"
"Excuse me," Alice said moderately, "you have arrived at the fifth bend?"
"No, I had not!" the mouse cried angrily.
"What? A knot!" Alice was always ready to help, she looked around, "oh, let me help you
untie it!")
（Wang, 2000: 41）
This translation is almost exact with the original, however, in Chinese, because 没有 and 结头 are
two different words, with completely different sounds, although the reader realized that they
were not understanding each other, they can't tell what exactly went wrong from the sentences.
Without the help of footnotes, it was impossible to enjoy what the original reader would enjoy.
Mode: The original emphasis was completely removed.
Overt Errors:
The following lexical error completely changed the original meaning. Although it made sense in
another way, also in Chinese, but it failed to convey the original meaning.
…"We went to school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle—we used to call him
Tortoise—"
"Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?" Alice asked.
"We called him Tortoise because he taught us," said the Mock Turtle angrily. "Really you
are very dull!"
(Carroll, 1993: 94-95)
…"我们在海里上学。教师是个老海龟，我们管它叫做玳瑁。"
"如果他不是玳瑁的话，你们为什么要叫他玳瑁呢？"爱丽丝问道。
"他教我们叫它玳瑁,"假海龟生气地说，"你真笨!"
(…"we studied in the sea. The teacher is a very old turtle, we called him Daimao."
"if he is not a Daimao, why would you call him Daimao?" Alice asked.

39
"He taught us to call it Daimao," Mock Turtle said angrily, "you are so dull!")
(Wang, 2000: 134)
Here, the original joke was the "Tort-oise" sounds like Taught-us, so the author meant to say that
because he used to teach us so we call him tortoise. But the translator, although he used the
word 教 which means teach, or let in Chinese, his translation meant it is because the Tortoise told
us to call him Tortoise. So, here, the translator didn't really get the joke in the original text.
However, the joke would work simply in Chinese; it is easy to understand that mock turtle called
his teacher a Daimao simply because he was told to.
Statement of Quality: This translation tried to maintain the original style and be faithful to the
original content by using equally formal language and expression. Because of the different
language system, however, the original language was marked by Victorian spelling, the
translation version used very standard Chinese characters, and this might because Chinese can't
really be marked by its spelling, which maybe can only be to separate the ancient and modern
Chinese. So, this book is a mixture with most parts being covert translation, and some are overt
translation, as the translation was made obvious by footnotes.
4.2.3 Wu's Alice's Adventure in Wonderland
Field: A story about a girl named 爱丽丝 and her experience in wonderland.
Textual means: The translator used explanation techniques as well as footnotes in order to deal
with wordplays. For instance: in Chapter One when Alice finally finished the fall, ran after the
rabbit and heard the rabbit said:"Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!" the translator
translates:"哦，我的耳朵和硬须呀!" 等于说:"我的天呀, 现在多么晚了呀!"("oh, my ears and
whiskers!" it means "oh my god, how late it is!")
As for footnotes, there are 65 footnotes all together in the book, among them 50 was dedicated
to explain puns and parodies, the rest of them were to explain some other cultural specific items,
for instance, plants, and toys that are not common in China.
Besides the two mentioned above, the author did make his own effort in translating wordplay as

40
well, he would just add footnote to explain more what he did. For instance:
"You promised to tell me your history, you know," said Alice, "and why it is you hate—C
and D," she added in a whisper, half afraid that it would be offended again"
(Carroll, 1993:35)
"你知道，你答应过把你的历史告诉我的,"爱丽丝说."以及你为什么憎恨——喵喵和
汪汪
①
."她悄没声儿地加上这一句，有些害怕说明白了又会冒犯它。
① 原文此处是 C and D，暗指猫(cat)和狗(dog)。上文说老鼠对它们又恨又怕，因
此这里爱丽丝不明说。
(Wu, 2010: 29)
Here, 喵喵 and 汪汪 are two sound words used in Chinese to mimicry the call of cats and dogs.
Although here the author used his own version, he still explained the original in the footnotes.
Another example is that
……
(Carroll, 1993: 94-95)
"我没干这一切!"老鼠非常生气地尖叫起来。
"你打了一个结
②
?"爱丽丝说，她老是随时准备出把力，所以心急地四处找什么,"哦,
让我一定帮你解开这个结!"
② 上一句"我没干这一切"的原文是"I had not!""not"与此句中的"knot"(结)发音相同,
作者用两个同音字做笔墨游戏.
(WU, 2010: 31)
Here, 切 and 结 both ends with the sound "ie" in Chinese. The translator not only put his own
effort in solving this wordplay, but also explained the original one in his footnotes.
Tenor: The translator was educated in China and appointed Shanghai director of Translation
Association. He re-translated Alice in wonderland in 2010. In his translation, he remained the
original style and content to the maximum. He use standard Chinese but not very formal phrase
or sentences, instead he used equally colloquial expressions for conversations.
Lexical means: Interjections used at the end of a direct quote such as"呀，啊，吗，啦，哪，嘛
", etc, make the conversion more colloquial within the standard Chinese frames. All the western
concepts are kept as it is in the original.

41
The relationship between the author-translator and reader is marked: The translator reminds
his reader that the book is a "second original" by using footnotes. His translation is very loyal to
the original content and style.
Mode: The emphasis was presented by adding dots under equivalent Chinese characters, but the
font changes in the original were lost in the translation.
Statement of Quality: This translation is a very obvious overt translation. The translator was very
loyal to the original work, both in style and content, although there are some format changes and
additions like the example discussed above, which showed traits of covert translation.
4.3 Discussion of the Results and Time's Effect on Wordplay Translation
As we have reached a basic understanding that those three different translations have different
qualities. Zhao's Alice is a covert translation; Wang's Alice is a mix of Covert and Overt Translation,
while Wu's Alice is an obvious overt translation. During the discussion, we will look more closely
how different quality can affect wordplay specifically in each case, then discuss if those
differences are related to times.
4.3.1 Proper Names
Of all the proper names in the book, protagonist Alice is a very interesting one. Alice was
originated from Greek, means "the truth". The writer put Alice in wonderland who was supposed
to speak for the truth or the normal. There's a contrast sense between the name and all the
weird experiences. When we looked at tree difference translation, 阿丽思,爱丽丝,爱丽丝, we
could started to see the difference. By the time Zhao translated Alice, there's no standard name
charts to search, and Zhao created his own version which not only showed the pronunciation, but
also the original meaning, Zhao used the word 思 in Chinese, which means to think, or being
thoughtful, reflect the contrast between a girl who should be thoughtful yet talk non-sense in the
book, while other two translators just used the standard version and the meaning got lost in the

42
translation. The same thing happened in English language over time, Alice became just a name,
other than a name with a meaning.
Another name that can reflect the times effect is Pat. Zhao translated as 八升, is a typical Chinese
name used in old China by inferior class. While other two translated it as 帕特，佩特 both are
translated according to the sound. The same thing happened to the name Bill the lizard, Zhao's
version was 毕二爷, 毕 sounds like bi in Chinese, it not only took the sound form, but also added
二爷，which is a typical way of calling someone less important but still in charge in a big old
Chinese family, while Wang's translation is 比尔, which is the standard translation for bill
according to its sound. Wu's translation is more interesting ,壁儿, it took the sound bi as well but
using the Chinese character 壁, which reminds people of gecko in Chinese, gecko looks like a
small lizard. These translation examples not only fit in with the books translation qualities but
also showed the characteristics of the times when it was translated. One more example would be
their translation of The Lory, which refers to Alice's sister Lorina. The Translation of Lory in Zhao's
version is very interesting, he used an informal name 鹦哥儿, which is how parrots are called in
old Beijing area in Zhao's time and in Chinese it means parrot-brother. By using this name, he
coincidentally solved the later problem when this Lory character had an arguement with Alice,
Lory said "I am older than you, and must know better"(Alice in wonderland, P32), and Zhao
translated "我到底是你哥哥，我肯定比你知道"(I am your brother, I sure know better). Thus,
because there is the meaning of brother in this character's name, he certainly assumes he is
older than others. The joke was successfully translated, despite the Chinese reader doesn't know
Lory was referring to Alice's sister Lorina. The joke was lost in the other two translations, Wang
translated to 鹦鹉，while Wu's 吸蜜小鹦鹉 is even more academically correct.
We could see that works that was translated in the different historical times have very different
way in translating certain proper names, the 1922 version would use Chinese characters that may
be less standard for today, and use some traditional appellation or dialect while dealing with
proper names, while Wu's translation are very close to that of Wang's version. This might
because they are relatively close considering the time they were translated. So we could
conclude that time has a very strong effect on proper name translation.

43
All the translation of proper names and their intended meanings are listed in a form in Appendix I,
and attached at the back of the thesis as appendix. Among them, the proper name whose
translation was affected by time is marked yellow. Translators overt attitude are market by
footnotes in green. We could reach the same conclusion by looking at the table.
4.3.2 Puns
As we have analyzed earlier that three books are different in quality. Zhao's version is a covert
translation; Wang's translation is a mix between covert translation and overt translation, while
Wu's translation is an overt translation.
As for the discussion in pun translation, I will pick one pun each for four difficult pun types to
discuss how they fit in their quality type and why time is the factor that affected them to be
translated the way they are.
Homophony:
"…you see the earth takes 24 hours to turn round on its axis—"
"Talking of axes," said the Duchess, "chop off her head!" (Carroll, 1993: 63)
"…你瞧，地球要二十四小时围着地轴转一回——"
那公爵夫人道,"还说斧子呢，砍掉她的头!" （Zhao, 1922: 49）
"…你知道，地球绕地轴转一次要二十四个小时."
"提起斧子 ch,"公爵夫人说,"把她的头砍掉!" (Wang, 2000: 82)
"你瞧，地球二十四小时绕着它的轴自转弗止——"
"提起了斧子 ch,"公爵夫人说道，:"把她的脑袋砍掉"
("Look, the earth turn round on its axis 24/7 nonstop—"
"Now you mentioned axes," said the Duchess, "chop off her head!")
(Wu, 2010: 61)
Here, axis and axes formed a pair of pun. Zhao's translation was still trying to make sense,
although he didn't translate this pun, he utilized one of Chinese linguistic features, which is
exactly the same meaning and function as the phrase "talking of something" in English. He
translated like this :" 还说斧子呢！…砍掉她的头!" "还说..呢" is usually used to stress whatever

44
was mentioned before in context. By using this phrase, he made his reader aware that a problem
occurred between the two speakers. However, he didn't use any other techniques, thus it is
impossible for a non-english speaking reader to understand why this is misunderstanding even
occurr. Wang simply used footnotes to explain to his readers that this is a pun. And WU not only
provided a very interesting way to tackle the pun but also used footnote to explain the pun to his
readers. In his translation, he added the notion "nonstop", which he used a made up Chinese
word of the correct version. The correct version would be"不止"（bu zhi）。 Instead, he used the
word 弗止(Fu zhi) which has a very similar sound with 斧子(Fu zi) although by adding those two
words it shifts the importance and the meaning of the whole sentence, it still transfers the pun to
his reader. Although he successfully translated the pun, he still added footnotes explaining this
pun, which made the translator visible.
Paronymy:
After Alice told the cat that the baby turned into a pig, the cat came back later and asked
"Did you say pig or fig?" said the Cat.
(Carroll, 1993: 68)
那猫问:"你刚才说猪还是书?"
(Zhao, 1922: 53)
"你刚才说的是'猪'还是'无花果'?"猫说。
(Wang, 2000: 90)
"你刚才说的是'猪娃'还是'无花果'?"那猫问道。
(Wu, 2010: 68)
Like always, Zhao used two words share the sound 'U' in Chinese to translate the pun, while the
other two translators chose to be loyal to the original content and explain the pun in footnotes.
Polysemy:
During the tea party, Alice and Hatter was talking about time, Hatter said
"I dare say you never even spoke to Time!"
"Perhaps not," Alice curiously replied:"but I know I have to beat time when I learn
music."
(Carroll, 1993: 73)
"我猜你同时候连话都没有说过!"
阿丽思答道,"或者没有。可是我知道我学音乐的时候要得拍时候的."
(Zhao, 1922: 58)

45
"我敢肯定你从来没同时间说过话!"
"也许没有,"爱丽丝谨慎地回答,"但是我学音乐的时候知道要打拍子."
(Wang, 2000: 98)
"我敢说你甚至从来都不曾跟时间谈过话!"
"也许是吧,"爱丽丝小心翼翼地说,"但是我知道我学音乐的时候不得不打拍子 ch."
(Wu, 2010: 74)
This is a very famous pun in the book, and its translation was definitely affected by when it was
translated. By the time Zhao translated Alice, Western music concepts started to get into China,
so the phrase beat time didn't have a universal translation back then. and the word 时候 is very
Beijing dialect vocabulary, that's maybe why Zhao choose to use 时候, instead of 时间, so that
the vocabulary fits in with the whole style.
Malapropism:
"Curiouser! And Curiouser!" Alice cried (she was so much surprised that for the moment
she quite forgot how to speak good English).
(Carroll, 1993: 24)
"越变越奇罕了，越变越稀怪了!"(因为阿丽思自己诧异到那么个样子,连话都说不好
了);
(Zhao, 1922: 8)
"越来越离奇了!" 爱丽丝嚷道(她惊异之下竟然忘了正规的英语用法).
(Wang, 2000: 19)
"真是越奇怪，真是越奇怪了!"爱丽丝嚷嚷着说(她惊讶得了不得,以至于此刻她把如
何说好英语忘的一干二净了).
(Wu, 2010: 14)
We could see from here that only Zhao's version actually translated this wordplay. The original
pun was a play on English grammar, the correct way of expressing would be "more curious",
there is no such word as curiouser as a comparative. And Zhao miss matched two Chinese words,
奇怪 and 稀罕, which means strange and rare or weird, and he translated the joke, and also add
that "she was so shocked that she couldn't even speak properly". He didn't mention anything
about English. While the other two translators both chose to be loyal to the original, and the pun
was lost in the translation. Although Wang's version mentioned that the wordplay was based on
the English Grammar in the brackets, he didn't really explain as to how it is not correct. Wu's
version was very faithful to the original content.

46
From the four cases above, we could see that the historical times the work was translated only
affected the attitude of how to translated the pun, either fit in with a covert translation (namely
translate the pun into a pun) or overt translation (namely not translate the pun but explain it).
Unless there are certain words that may be translated into a word that was used back then, and
may not be used the same way in another time, times as a factor doesn't seem to affect how the
pun was actually translated.
All the puns and their translations are listed in a form 2 in Appendix II, the ones affected by time
are marked in yellow, and translator's overt attitude was marked with footnotes in green. Looking
at the table, we could reach the same conclusion.
4.3.3 Parodies
Of all the parodies, the most famous might be You are old, Father William, the original verse is
The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them by Robert Southey. The poem has eight verses,
I will just include four verses here:
"You are old, father William," the young man
said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
"In my youth," father William replied to his
son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."
"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws
are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and
the beak--
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the
cried,
"The few locks which are left you are grey;
You are hale, father William, a hearty old man;
Now tell me the reason, I pray."
"In the days of my youth," father William
replied,
"I remember'd that youth would fly fast,
And abus'd not my health and my vigour at
first,
That I never might need them at last."
cried,
"And life must be hast'ning away;
You are cheerful and love to converse upon
death;
Now tell me the reason, I pray."
"I am cheerful, young man," father William

47
law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my
jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."
(Carroll, 1993:, 51-53)
replied,
"Let the cause thy attention engage;
In the days of my youth I remember'd my God!
And He hath not forgotten my age"
(Gardner, 2000: 226)
"威廉师傅你这么老，
你的头发白又白；
倒竖蜻蜓，你这么巧——
你想这样儿该不该？
先生答到,"我那时小，
怕把脑子跌去来；
现在脑子我没多少，
天天练武随便摔."
威廉师傅你这么弱，
只该喝点汤光汤，
吃鸡带骨头还叫饿，
这样你胃口伤不伤？
威廉答道,"我做知县,
太太总要来帮我忙,
件件案子要扭着我辩,
所以练得我嘴这么强."
(Zhao, 1922: 39)
你老啦，威廉老爹，
年轻人说
你的头发已经很白
可你仍旧老是拿大顶，
你觉得你这种年纪是否应该？
我年轻时，
威廉老爹回答他的儿子
我曾担心会损伤脑筋
可我现在完全确信我根本没有脑
子
于是我就一次又一次地玩起拿大
顶。
你老啦，年轻人说，
你的牙口不好，
照说除了肥肉什么都吃不了，
可是你啃掉了那只鹅，连骨头都
不剩，
请问你怎么能做到？
我年轻时，父亲说，
对法律有了兴趣，
事无大小都要同我妻子争论，
我练就了有力的脸部肌肉，
一辈子受用不尽。
(Wang, 2000: 66)
那个青年说，你老了，威廉爸
爸;
很白很白呀，你的头发
可是你一刻不停地竖蜻蜓，好
起劲——
你这把年纪，这么玩儿行不
行？
威廉爸爸回答他的儿子说：
年轻时，只怕脑子会伤着，
可现在我完全肯定自己没脑
子，
所以我一玩再玩也没事。
那个青年说，你老了，牙齿不
顶用，
比板油硬点的，你就嚼不动，
然而你却把鹅连骨带喙都吃
光——
请说说你究竟如何往肚里装?
爸爸说：年轻时，我学的是法
律，
老婆跟我辩论每一件案例，
因此体力强，肌肉健，下颚坚，
这叫我享用一直到晚年.
(Wu, 2010: 48)
Compare the original verse and the parody, we could tell that the parody was making fun of the
moral teaching of the original. For instance, the original teaches us youth fly fast, so father
preserve the health and vigour yet to find out he might not need them at last, while the parody

On study of how the time of translation of a book affects English--shaotong chen--13258825

On study of how the time of translation of a book affects English--shaotong chen--13258825

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