Pragmatic Adaptation To The Humor Misunderstandings In The Course Of Translation

Drawing on the Theory of Adaptation, this thesis attempts to conduct a tentative study on the humor misunderstandings in the course of translation, aiming at the improvement of approaches to the humor translation and the promotion in the appreciation of situational comedies and convey of the humor theories. Through a case study of American television sitcom Will and Grace, we analyze how humor misunderstandings come into being and how to avoid humor misunderstandings by applying an adaptation approach, which is conductive into the practical humor translation field.Will and Grace is a popular Emmy Award-winning American television sitcom which was originally broadcast on NBC from 1998 to 2006. The show takes place in New York City and focuses on the lives of four best friends. It is universally considered as one of the most difficult sitcoms to translate due to its complexity in humor language and large amount of idioms and slangs. The translator has made a great many misunderstandings in the translating process of Will and Grace, which have provided enough data and materials to analyze for the research at present.The Theory of Adaptation holds that the translation of humor in essence represents a continuous making of choices ranging from selection of the source humorous utterance to specific techniques employed to achieve a desired purpose. If the translator makes the wrong choice in the comprehension, transformation or output of humorous utterances in the translating process, a humor misunderstanding would come into being. The humor misunderstandings can be resulted in three different linguistic levels, which are correspondingly the wordplay level, the semantic level and the context level. Through a case-related analysis into these three types of humor misunderstandings within a pragmatic adaptation approach, this thesis aims to provide some suggestions on how to avoid the occurrence of humor misunderstandings. Therefore, the conclusion is drawn: The translator should accord to the adaptation principle to make the right choice in both comprehending and translating the humorous utterances in the sitcom in order to reduce the humor misunderstandings and make the sitcom well appreciated.With an attempt to address the situation where little research has been done from a pragmatic adaptation approach in the humor translations, this paper hopes to attract more researchers to devote their efforts to this special field for insightful attentions and to help to arouse the prosperity of situational comedies for a better entertainment.