E-c Sitcom Subtitling As A Norm-governed Activity

This thesis is a case study of Toury's norm theory in translating humor in television. The complexities of the E-C sitcom subtitling mainly result from the fact that the subtitler has to comply with a whole range of norms, among which the operational norms defined in Toury's terminology, are the focus of the present study. With a descriptive approach, the author firstly discusses the problems that subtitlers may encounter when translating humor in the American sitcom Raymond (The First Season), and then explores translation strategies and modes adopted in two Chinese versions of Raymond, and finally identifies some operational norms and normative mechanisms influencing the subtitlers' choices during their decision-making process.The thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter 1 starts with a brief introduction of the motivation and methodology as well as an overview of previous research. A detailed account of the theoretical foundation of the study is also presented.In chapter 2, based on Toury's "sub-group" concept, the study begins with a classification of humor in Raymond into three groups: conversational humor, extralinguistic humor and intralinguistic humor, the latter two of which involve much more translation problems and pose much more challenges to Chinese subtitlers, and are therefore selected as the focus of the whole study. Problems involved in the translation of extralinguistic and intralinguistic humor in Raymond are analyzed at length from technical, cultural and linguistic perspectives in this chapter.The followed three chapters focus on the analysis of two classes of operational norms identified in subtitling translation of Raymond. The first class of norms, i.e. the possible general norms governing the subtitling activity, are studied in chapter 3 on the basis of extratextual...