The Non-Equivalent Humor Effect In Subtitled Sitcom Translation And Its Countermeasures

With the development of cultural industry chain and popularization of Internet,American sitcoms walk into people's lives and is subject to the study by the academia of translation.Humor effect is an important manifestation of sitcoms.Therefore,discussing the humor effect of sitcom translation usually comes first before judging its translation quality.In this thesis,the author uses Chinese and English subtitles of Friends as texts and studies the humor effect of subtitle translation in Friends with questionnaire surveys from a comparative perspective of Chinese versions.In the process of watching Friends,the author finds out Chinese subtitles do not reproduce the same humor effect as English subtitles present.The author selects 28 original Chinese versions from this sitcom and makes 100 formal questionnaires to examine reactions of Chinese audiences to Chinese versions.The test result is confirmed that the non-equivalent humor effect of sitcom translation in Friends is neither an individual phenomenon,nor the author's personal feeling.As a result,the author has to consider how to improve the humor effect of Chinese subtitles and achieve the equivalent humor effect between Chinese and English subtitles.Through the literature review on humor translation,humor translation in sitcoms and humor translation in Friends,the author finds some scholars have already paid attention to the problem of non-equivalent humor effect in sitcom translation,but whether there is something wrong with translation examples found out by scholars or whether their retranslated texts achieve better humor effects remain to be tested.Few of these retranslated texts can not only achieve equivalent humor effects between Chinese and English subtitles but also ensure proper language forms,which indicates that scholars can do better in the choice of translation strategies.On the basis of this,there are only a few studies on humor translation of Friends which are made under the guidance of the “reader's response” theory.This theory emphasizes source languages and target languages need to maintain equivalent in terms of information,expression and emotion in the process of conversion,and these three theoretical contents have an important guiding significance for achieving the equivalent humor effect of translation examples in this thesis.The author analyzes original versions with guidance of this theory and finds the problem of non-equivalent humor effect mainly begins with translators' few notices to cultural images that target viewers are familiar with,expressions of proper localization,viewers' acceptable ways of uttering humorous erotic taboo,and contextual elements needed in target languages in their pursuits of faithfulness to source texts.In order to prove the guiding role of the “reader's response” theory on the humor effect of sitcoms,the author uses different translation methods to revise previous 28 original versions under the guidance of this theory and makes 100 questionnaires again.The author puts 28 retranslated texts into questionnaires to test Chinese audiences' responses to the humor effect that retranslated Chinese subtitles present.By comparing results of two questionnaires before and after,it is shown that the humor effect of Chinese subtitles retranslated by the author in Friends has been significantly improved.In this thesis,the qualitative analysis and questionnaire surveys are combined to explore how to realize equivalent humor effects of subtitle translation in sitcoms.Conclusions drawn in this thesis are: Firstly,compared with the translation standard of being faithful to the literal meaning of source texts,the “reader's response” theory is more suitable for guiding humor translation in sitcoms;Secondly,manifestations of target languages should conform to aesthetic needs of target viewers when a sitcom is watched by its target viewers.In other words,compared with translation strategies and methods of foreignization,translation strategies and methods of domestication adopted by the author can more effectively help and solve problems of humor translation in research on sitcoms.Therefore,sitcom translation based on recreational demands should always focus on recreating humor effects,and humor effects received between source viewers and target viewers should also be the same or alike.