Analysis Of Humor Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

In recent years,with the increase of foreign film and television works introduced into China,subtitle translation has attracted more and more attention of translators.Among many films and TV works,sitcom is one of the most popular forms.In the subtitling of sitcom,there are bound to be various expressions of verbal humor,which have become the focus and difficulty of subtitling translation.According to current research,the study of humor translation in subtitles mainly focuses on translation quality and strategies,but the author believes that as the ultimate receiver of subtitle translation,the target audience should be an indispensable research perspective.Therefore,from the perspective of the target audience,the author proposes to use relevance theory to study the humorous effect in subtitle translation.This study takes humor and subtitles as two starting points with the Chinese subtitles of the American sitcom Modern Family as an example,and tries to study it from the perspective of the target audience by using relevance theory,aiming to explore the humor translation in the subtitles of sitcoms.Through the analysis of the chosen subtitles,the author believes that relevance theory can be used to explain the humor in most subtitle translation.In the process of translation,the translator can flexibly adopt translation strategies such as direct and indirect translation and techniques such as addition and deduction under the guidance of relevance theory.The effective combination of these two strategies and various skills can help to achieve optimal relevance.This study will provide some inspiration for Chinese translation of English comedy subtitles,but there are limitations,which need to be further improved in future research.For example,more cases can be studied through more scientific and comprehensive classification methods,and then more suggestions can be given to deal with subtitle translation.