On The Translation Of Humor Utterance In The Subtitle Of Wreck-it Ralph From Cultural Translation Theory

Humor is the spirit of animation movies, which is an important inherent art skill either. Animationmovies convey humorous effects by using some techniques including visual, auditory and narrative etc, andthe crucial channel of the conveying is language which, to the target audience, is translation subtitlelanguage. What is believed to be the most important thing in translating humor animation subtitle is thetransmission of humorous effects. As we know, because of differences of language, culture etc, humortranslation has been concerned as a arduous task. As some scholars believe translation of humor is nearly aschallenging as that of poetry. What accounts for this is that subtitling, as a kind of audiovisual text, hasvarious parameters that constrain translators. Hence, translators have to conquer many difficulties intranslating humor animation subtitle. The author of this paper take Wrecker, nominated for the bestanimated movie Oscar2013, as the research object. To proceed from translating subtitle, the authorsummarized some inherent constraints of subtitle translation, and divided the humor language in Wreckerinto four categories. On the basis of analysis, the author proposed some translation strategies in light ofhumor theory and cultural translation theory.From cultural translation theory, translation is not only bilingual studies, but more exactly speakingcross cultural studies. The purpose of translation is to surmount linguistic barriers and promote culturalcommunication. We should know it is cultural information not languages that is the main operation form oftranslation. When confronting cultural constraints caused by special time-space, for the sake of servingnative culture better, letting target language audiences at the minimum expense of language informationand acquiring information and effects which is the same as that of source language audiences, it isreasonable and necessary for translators to adopt some translation skills including omission and addition etc.Animation humor is essentially humor culture. Language is the carrier of culture and humor language isproduct of humor culture. There are many differences between Chinese and western culture, thereforenaturally we can find differences from their humor culture. In this paper, the author analyzed the definitionand features of humor and divided humor in Wrecker into four main categories–universal humor, culturalhumor, linguistic humor and humor related to games. Basing on culture translation theory, the authorproposed to adopt different translation strategies according to different types of humor, which includingomission, substitution, rewrite, addition. It is expected that the findings of this thesis will be helpful forsubtitle translators and scholars of translation studies.