On Translating Verbal Humor In American Sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond

With the economic globalization and the springing up and brisk developing ofthe TV industry, a large number of foreign films and television works are swarminginto Chinese market, among which American sitcoms are favored and preferred bycountless Chinese audiences because of their lighthearted language style. How toconvey this kind of humorous language to the Chinese audiences successfully hasalready become an imperative demand of the market.Through the application of the six Knowledge Resources (Script Opposition,Logical Mechanism, Situation, Target, Narrative Strategy and Language) and themetric of joke similarity in the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH), thisresearch attempts to analyze the verbal humor and its translation in the Americansitcom Everybody Loves Raymond by setting up a database extracted from thesitcom’s English version and the CCTV-8dubbing in Chinese. According to the gainsand losses of the six KRs in the source text and the target text, the author classifiesthe data into four types, and sums up the reservation state of the humorous effects andthe corresponding distribution of translation methods used in each type. Then theimpact of different translation methods on translating verbal humor in sitcoms isanalyzed. The research aims to answer the following questions:(1) What makes ajoke humorous?(2) How does the reservation of the six parameters in the targetlanguage influence the humorous effect?(3) What’s the main factor that leads to thedrop or loss of humorous effect in the target text?(4) How do the translation methodsinfluence the humorous effect in the target language?The research finds that (1) If the target text shares all the parameters with thesource text, the humorous effect of the target text is supposed to be the same with thesource text;(2) If the target text shares the highest parameter SO with the source text but differs in only one or two other parameters like NS or LA, the humorous effect init is reserved or just lowered a little;(3) If the target text shares five or fourparameters with the source text only differing in one or two parameters including thehighest parameter SO, the humorous effect in it is greatly reduced or lost;(4) If thetarget text shares three or two parameters excluding the highest parameter SO with thesource text, the humorous effect is completely lost. The research also finds that seventranslation methods have been used in the translation, in which literal translation takesup the largest percentage (61%), followed by free translation (22%), synthesization(6%), transliteration(4%), substitution(2%), omission (3%) and amplification (2%).The research shows that, in order to successfully deliver the humorous effects withoutlosing the original language flavor in the target text, the translator should respect asmany KRs as possible in the translation, especially for the higher parameters.This thesis proves that the GTVH is a mighty explanatory theory to interpret theproduction and understanding of verbal humor in a sitcom. It also proves that the useof different translation methods has a great impact on the reservation of humorouseffect in the translated version. The results of this research hope to facilitate people’sappreciation of verbal humor and offer some enlightenment to the study of verbalhumor and its translation in American sitcoms.