On The Chinese Translation Of Slang In The Big Bang Theory Under The Guidance Of Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory

In recent decades, with the development of computer technology, films and TV products from other nations become more and more welcomed among Chinese people, especially the young generation. English films, TV series and documentaries have not only met people’s requirement of knowledge, but also provided people with entertainment and relaxation. Thanks to its humorous plot and constant climax, American sitcoms, from the prevalent Friends in the previous decade to today’s Two Broke Grils, Grey’s Anatomy and The Big Bang Theory have gradually played an important part in people’s daily life. Although, it is more and more convenient to get access to these programs, the cultural and language barriers still exist. Many Chinese people are incapable of understanding all of the plots without the help of Chinese subtitle translation. Along with the popularization of English audio-visual products, a high quality Chinese translation can not only help the audience to comprehend the plot, but also make a great contribution to cultural communication and mass entertainment. On the other hand, in order to get close to the audience, these popular American TV series prefer to use lots of colloquial words and slang words, which increase the difficulties in subtitle translation.For the moment, the studies of subtitle translation at home and abroad mainly focus on translation strategies, humorous translation and so on. On the other hand, researches on slang words mainly focus on the classification of slang words, features of slang words and the strategies on slang words translation. However, only a few of them have ever tried to combine subtitle translation with slang words translation, In order to improve the quality of subtitle translation and enhance cultural communication, this thesis aims at combining slang words translation with subtitle translation based on the previous studies on these two perspectives. In order to better clarify the issue, the writer takes the famous American sitcom The Big Bang Theory as a typical example to analyze the Chinese translating version of slang words in it. After a relatively detailed research, the author classifies some typical examples in this sitcom, and analyzes the Chinese translation of those slang words. As a result, the author finds that slang words update very fast and have various forms, as a result, translators should try to jump out of the box and deal with this problem from a new angle. On the other hand, Nida’s functional equivalence speaks highly of the meaning rather than the form of the translation work, from some perspective, functional equivalence theory may better meet the needs of a relatively ideal translation.Nevertheless, because of the limited time, knowledge background and academic competence, the author can hardly collect all the slang words which appear in The Big Bang Theory and make a thorough analysis on all of them. In order to be more persuasive, a comparative study needs to be made between Nida’s functional equivalence with other translation principles. And hopefully, these limitations can be improved in the future studies.