A Cognitive Approach To Humor Translation In Subtitling

Situation comedy,short for sitcom,is a popular form of screen art,originated in American but now spreading the entire world.Verbal humor is the most distinctive feature of sitcom and the canned laughter marks the witty words in each episode. However,when imported to China,sitcom has encountered the barrier of understanding,due to the imperfect job done by the translator who,in some cases,fails to deliver humor from the source text(ST) to the target text(TT) successfully through the assistance of subtitles.This current research,based on the progress in one branch of cognitive linguistics, Conceptual Blending Theory(CBT),discusses the phenomenon of humor translation in the specific context,sitcom,with the objective of providing a solution to the ineffective humor translation in sitcoms.In light of CBT,the thesis argues that the target audience's difficulty in understanding humor in subtitled imported sitcoms is caused by the the default of schematic knowledge stored in their long-term memory. The translator's role is therefore vital in that s/he is supposed to make compensation to bridge the gap in schematic knowledge between the source and target audience by means of subtides.Inspired by and based upon Conceptual Blending Network(CBN),this research proposes,for a better pedbrmance of the translator,a four-step analytical model that clearly reflects the cognitive working process a translator is likely to follow when subtitling humor in sitcoms.The first step builds up a network in source language within the source humorous context.It is a process of reasoning out the mechanism of the specific humorous scene.The second step sets up another network in target language from the cognitive perspective of the target audience,with two input spaces translated and the generic space and the blend left blank.Step Three completes the blending in the target network by filling the generic space with an appropriate element generated from the target inputs and restricted by the unique feature of target language. The last step is for the production of subtitles,which combines blending in the target network with the reference to the source text.This model is thereafter adjusted to specific types of humor specially chssified in the current study and applied to analyze different types of humor in the elaborately selected case.the American Sitcom,Will and Grace. This research adopts a qualitative analytical method by drawing upon the previous studies respectively in screen translation,humor translation,and academic advance in CBT.The data analysis lies in the application of the variations of the proposed analytical model to the case study of Will and Grace,whose first season of 22 episodes is used as database for analyzing humor translation in sitcoms.This thesis concludes,after a careful theoretical deduction and a qualitative textual analysis,the proposed model in light of Conceptual Blend ing Theory is proved to be useful in guiding the process of humor translation in subtitling.With its help,the translator can work out solutions for more effective translation of humor in sitcoms.In the meantime,it inspires the folbwing researchers by opening a cognitive window for subtitle studies as well as humor translation.