On Translation Strategies Of Verbal Humor From The Perspective Of Memetics

Sitcom(situation comedy in short)is a universal wisdom of human culture and a unique art of humor.Since the birth of sitcoms in America,they are welcomed and loved by audiences all over the world for the comic conflicts,hilarious characters and humorous utterances.The Big Bang Theory is a rising sitcom with a great reputation and popularity among audiences mainly for its wit and humor.Verbal humor is the essence of sitcoms,but it is not understandable to all people with barriers of language and culture.Therefore,the translation of verbal humor in sitcoms is necessary;and the quality of translation has a direct impact on the audience?s comprehension and appreciation of the source humor.Memetics is a theory developed to explain the evolution of culture,which originates from Darwin?s evolutionary theory.Meme is the core concept of memetics,which is defined as a unit of cultural transmission or a replicator of information through the way of imitation.It has drawn great attention from varied fields because of its great explanatory power.It provides a new viewpoint to explore cultural phenomena.The application of memetics to translation can deepen or even change our understanding of translation studies.From the perspective of memetics,translation is a process of meme replication and transmission through language and culture.Translators serve as a bridge to connect the meme pool of source language and that of target language.Under the guidance of the basic principles of memetics,the present thesis conducts a qualitative study with theoretical analysis of verbal humor translation strategies,and chooses the popular American sitcom The Big Bang Theory as a case study.The translation of verbal humor is an inter-linguistic and intercultural transmission of verbal humor memes.In fact,an analogy can be drawn between the translation of verbal humor and the survival of memes.Based on this memetic process of translation,four main strategies are proposed to introduce verbal humor in American sitcoms to the Chinese audience.The strategies are validated by explicitly analyzing examples of verbal humor memes from The Big Bang Theory.It is hoped that the study can provide a theoretical guidance and an operational approach for further research on sitcom translation.