Domestication And Foreignization In The Dubbing Translation Of Humor In American Animated Films

In recent years, American animated films have been loved by the Chineseaudience for the humorous plots. They are playing an important role in cross-culturalcommunications between China and the US. As dubbing is one of the major waysAmerican animations are introduced to the Chinese audience, especially to children,the way the script is translated into Chinese and later dubbed by the dubbers greatlyinfluences the quality of the animated film. However, few AVT studies are conductedon the dubbing translation of animated films, not to mention that of the humor texts,one of the most difficult parts of dubbing translation. Thus the thesis tries to explorethe dubbing of the humor elements in American animated films in an effort to sort outthe laughter-inducing techniques and the corresponding dubbing translation strategies.The theory of domestication and foreignization put forward by FriedrichSchleiermacher and further developed by Lawrence Venuti is used as the theoreticalframework of the thesis. With a wide adoption of analytical methods such as casestudy, comparison, theoretical analysis, etc., the thesis gives a detailed study on a totalof15American animated films and their official dubbing texts in the mainland ofChina. The dubbing translation of humor are analyzed from four aspects, namelyrepetition, word games, cultural terms, and internet buzz words. In conclusion, thethesis asserts that domestication is more favored than foreignization in translatinghumor dubbing texts of American animations. To be more specific, the translatorsalways adopt the following translation techniques: adding or reducing words;changing word class; modifying English sentence structure into authentic Chinesesentence structure; replacing English cultural terms with Chinese cultural terms;adopting Chinese dialects and internet buzz words; rewriting; referring to Chinesecross talks and short sketches. There are three reasons why most translators preferdomestication:(1) the watching pleasure of target audience is always taken as the toppriority of the dubbing translation of humor in animated films;(2) as part of the popculture, animations are closely connected with the culture of the target country;(3)compared with subtitling, dubbing has its unique features, which requires higherdegree of verbal naturalness and lip-synchronization.