Humor Translation In Sitcom Subtitling

As an everyday phenomenon, humor is a typical and unique way of communication for human beings. Translation of humor helps people in different societies exchange their humor and share the laughter, which furthermore shortens their psychological distance and facilitates their communication. Therefore, study on humor translation has gradually become an indispensable part in cross-cultural communication. In fact, being language and culture bound, humor frequently makes itself a tangible problem for translators. At the same time, with an increasing number of foreign films and TV programs being introduced into China, subtitling, especially of sitcoms, has occupied a significant position in the transmission of humor inherent in the audiovisual materials, which however, has not received as much attention as it deserves.This thesis, taking the popular American sitcom Friends as an example, aims at exploring various categories of sitcom humor and discussing some feasible translation strategies and means in light of the framework of translation variation theory proposed by Professor Huang Zhonglian. The theory of translation variation has been arousing much controversy in the translation circle and an ever-growing number of scholars have carried out studies on it. Translation variation is put forward as a theory in contrast to complete translation, with its major principle of consciously modifying the original in translation to meet specific needs of specific readers. From a general survey of the application of translation variation, which develops from contingency to consciousness, we can find that translation variation is all the more significant. However, the theory has seldom found application to the humor translation in sitcom subtitling. The author of this thesis, therefore, attempts to carry out a study in this field and intends to give some insight into translation in the audiovisual medium.