Towards Norms In Subtitling: A Descriptive Study Of Humor Translation In The English Sitcom

With an increasing number of foreign films and TV programs being introduced into China, subtitling, one of the major forms of screen translation, has occupied a significant position in the transmission of cultural value inherent in the audiovisual materials, which, however, has received very little attention in the literature and remains one of the most pressing areas of research in translation studies. This thesis attempts to explore, through a descriptive study, the problems of subtitling in terms of translating humor, including intralinguistic humor and extralinguistic humor, in television comedy and try to identify some of the norms that influence subtitlers' decision-making in China by comparing two subtitled versions of the American sitcom Friends now available in China, thus giving some insight into translation in the audiovisual medium.