On Subtitle Translation Of Humor In Friends From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

With the development of globalization in recent years, the economic and cultural communication among the countries all over the world becomes a lot more frequent. Therefore, we are favored with much more opportunities to share all kinds of resources including foreign movies and TV series, especially those imported from America. So we are posed with another issue-to promote the quality and quantity of US multimedia products. Accordingly, translation, as a bridge between cultures, becomes even more important. People's demand for audio-visual products of good quality is increasing rapidly. Therefore, audio-visual translation has become an indispensable field of translation study and practice.Friends is a well-known sitcom. Its funny scenarios have gained itself a great reputation among audiences. There are many lines involving rhetorical devices and wordplay, which makes cross-culture communication tougher and tougher. Meanwhile what faces the translators is to convey precise messages as well as humor effects. The discussion of audio-visual translation by the related expertise brought about less mature results. The disciplines concluded in their study can't guide the general translation practice. So far there's no translation maxim that serves as a forever rule of subtitle translation. Yet fortunately, they have paved a way for our further study. Based on their discussion and conclusion, we can make some detailed analysis in order to find out the most practical and flexible theory as a guidance for subtitle translation. This paper will probe into subtitle translation of humor in Friends according to functional equivalence theory. This theory consider it a criterion to equal the target audiences'response toward source material with the source language audiences', which proposed a new way of thinking in regard to translation.Through case study of all kinds of humor in Friends, this paper put forward detailed strategies in accordance with functional equivalence theory. It is finally proved that a good subtitle translation should not only be precise, oral, but also audience-oriented.