Achievement Of Humor Effects From Subtitle Translation Perspective

With the increasingly cultural exchanges in the world, audiovisual, as a kind of cultural tool, play s an indispensable role in promoting the mutual exchanges and understanding among different nations. The appearance of the Functional Skopos Translation Theory has provided a new perspective for the translation studies. The core of this theory is the theory that every translation is determined by the "Skopos", which shakes off the restriction of "the source text is the most important". In order to achieve the translation purpose, the translator is granted with more freedom in the procession of translating. Subtitle translation, as a kind of special text translation, is undertaken under the restrictions of time and space. In order to maximally perform the commercial function of the audiovisual in the target audience, the differences of language as well as culture between the two nations must be taken into account. Therefore, it is of great value to study the subtitle translation in the light of the Skopos Theory.This thesis is a tentative study of subtitle translation from the Skopos Theory perspective. With a case study of friends, the thesis attempts to do a research on its subtitle translation of humorous utterances. The thesis firstly analyzes the feasibility and necessity of applying the Skopos Theory to subtitle translation. According to the "Skopos Rule" of this theory, subtitle translation is a purposeful activity, which is to make the target audience understand and accept the original information and gain the same spiritual experience as the target audience do within the limited time and space. The peculiar purpose of every audiovisual determines the adoption of many different translation approaches. According to the "Coherence Rule", the subtitled text is required to make sense for the target audience, which means the translator should consider the expectation of the target audience and make sure the target text is correspondent with their language and culture. The "Fidelity Rule" in the Skopos Theory states that the target text should be in line with the source text as much as possible, which means the subtitle's translator should try his best to maintain the source information.Friends, as a very famous sitcom in America, has conquered many young students across the globe. The main function of the subtitle in this case is to create and convey humorous effect. With the Skopos Theory as its theoretical basis, a survey is conducted in this thesis. The author interviews forty students in a questionnaire, who are all non-English major. This survey examines how well the humorous effect is conveyed to the target audience by the translator of the version chosen in this thesis. This point of view is also examined and supported by data collection and text analysis. With the humorous function as the standard and through the detailed analysis of the target text, the author summarizes the four translation strategies adopted in conveying the original humorous effect in this case. The survey also finds out that due to the improper translation some humorous effect of the original text is lost in the target audience. Based on the pragmatics translation theory, the author makes attempts to retranslate the humorous utterances to achieve the function of the target text: humorous effect. Finally, the author points out the limitations of this study and suggestions for future studies with the hope of providing some implications on the subtitle translation pedagogy, especially the subtitle translation on the humor.