The Effective Transfer Of The Cultural Presupposition In The Translation Of Humorous Subtitles

Fiends is a well-known American sitcom. Because of its well-written funny script typical of American humor, it has won great popularity all around China, and it attracts much attention to its subtitle translation. Recently translation researchers and translators begin to focus on the subtitling. They explore the specific features and techniques of this translation type. But few of them have come up with the guiding translation strategies to deal with the cultural presuppositions that cause the humor in the subtitlesFriends includes a great number of cultural elements and most of them are used to produce humorous effect. Its believed by the author that humor is mostly realized by language itself, and it is known to all that language is an integral part of culture. Translation can be regarded as a kind of intercultural communication. So the transference of the humorous effect by cultural connotation seems very important. The thesis is a practical subtitle translation study on the transfer of the humor caused by various cultural presuppositions. Through literature searching, the author categorizes the cultural presuppositions in Friends, provides an analysis of the popular translated subtitle version from a pragmatic perspective, and summarizes strategies for translating culture-loaded words in the subtitles to produce the humorous effect based on the principle of pragmatic equivalence.Cultural presupposition is a kind of social common awareness or group awareness that is determined by a certain nation or social culture in brief, i.e. stereotyped thinking and behavioral patterns. This kind of common awareness or group awareness is an integration of the social experiences of certain community. Translators from different cultural backgrounds unconsciously explain or understand the same cultural phenomenon in different cultures with their own social awareness or group awareness. In order to translate successfully, translators are required to get familiar not only with the similarities and differences of the structure and discourse of the two involved languages but also with the using characteristics and social cultural norms. Thus, they can correctly understand the messages in the original text and transfer the writer's intended meaning to the readers through their work in the condition fit for the culture and the cognitive expectations of the readers of the translation.In the process of translation, the translator will inevitably come across some obstacles caused by differences in cultural context. Therefore, it becomes a problem calling for highly attention that how to understand cultural presupposition and how to properly deal with cultural presupposition in translation. To solve such problems, the translator should take pragmatic equivalence as the general principle, the transfer of pragmatic meaning as the purpose, the intention of the writer and the cultural awareness level of the target readers as the starting point. Pragmatic translation theory that focuses on the orientation on the target audience, pragmatic meaning a well as the illocutionary force, can provide instructive principles and suggestions to guarantee the smoothness of communication and success in translation.