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On the Verbal Humor Translation in Friends from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory

Author: LiZuoZuo
Tutor: LiuXiuYu
School: Liaoning University
Course: English Language and Literature
Keywords: functional equivalence theory sitcom verbal humor reader-response
CLC: H315.9
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 473
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Abstract

Translating is a complicated and systematic work which plays a crucial role in intercultural communication. With deepening cultural communication among countries and internationalization of economic development, an increasing number of audiovisual products from foreign countries have been introduced into China in recent years. English movies and TV series attract a lot of Chinese audiences for whom watching foreign movies embodies an elegant and refined taste for fashion. In this circumstance, subtitling for foreign movies is badly needed in market. Sitcom translation is a relatively special part in subtitling.Friends is an outstanding work among American sitcoms. It wonderfully and harmoniously combines with particularly individualized six leading characters, excellent performance of actors and actress, ingeniously-knit plot and above all the lines in which verbal humor is brilliantly designed. A vast panorama of the American style of humor is exhibited in this sitcom.In this paper, the author chooses Friends as the object of study to explore the translation of verbal humor which is the essence of lines in a sitcom.Unlike other literary texts, verbal humor in sitcom lines challenges translators in that humorous effects need to be preserved after being translated. But in practical translation work, humorous effects in original text are rather difficult to be preserved in translated text, at least not in a same degree of enjoyment, as a result of great differences between languages and cultures. Now among the various versions of subtitle of Friends flooding on the Internet, satisfactory one is rare to be seen. These versions are rendered and published by non-authorized translation teams without any theoretical guidance to follow.Nida in his functional equivalence theory puts forward a new concept“reader’s response”, according to which the translator should make the target reader respond to the translated text as the same way as original reader does to the source text. This concept happens to correspond with the purpose of translating verbal humor in Friends, which aims to retain humorous effects as the same degree as that in source language in order to make Chinese audiences enjoy themselves equally. In this sense, Nida’s functional equivalence theory provides scientific guidance for translating verbal humor in Friends. This thesis consists of an introduction, the main body and a conclusion. Its main contents are as follows:The first part is introduction, which states the purpose of this study and its actual academic significance and then gives an introduction of the situation concerning to this study at home and abroad.The second part is the main body, which includes three chapters.Chapter One is an overview of functional equivalence theory. It starts with the basic definition and development of Nida’s functional equivalence theory, followed by a specific cognition to functional equivalence theory which has implication in terms of guiding sitcom translation.Chapter Two explores the feasibility of functional equivalence theory as theoretical guidance for verbal humor translation in Friends. At first, it deals with the features of lines in Friends and categorizes the verbal humor in Friends into universal humor, linguistic humor and culture-related humor. Then, it moves on to the analysis of elements that constrain verbal humor rendering, including ideological diversities, cultural vacuum in target language culture, the linguistic characteristics of source language itself and time or space restrictions to audiovisual texts. At the end of this chapter, the author gives an explanation of the feasibility of applying Nida’s functional equivalence theory to guide verbal humor translation in Friends from the aspect of the consistency between the purpose of translating verbal humor in Friends and the nature of functional equivalence theory - the concept of“reader’s response”.Chapter Three comes into the translation practice of verbal humor in Friends in the light of functional equivalence theory. The author chooses specific cases from lines in Friends, following Nida’s four-step procedure - analyzing, transferring, restructuring and testing, to evaluate and analyze the translation of verbal humor in Friends from the perspective of functional equivalence, and to put forward strategies respectively. In translating universal humor, naturalness in the target language deserves the priority over other principles. In translating verbal humor equipped with linguistic features, the translator has to imitate the source text to produce a second-hand creation by taking advantage of characteristics of the target language. As for the culture-related humor, the first task for a translator is to reveal in the target text the actual meaning behind the cultural information in the source text and use flexible strategies to control the loss of the humorous effects after translating in the least amount. After the above concrete analysis, the author provides a modified version of Chinese subtitles for every single example.The last part is conclusion, which summarizes the preceding research, points out the direction of sitcom translation and lays the ground foundation for future study.

On the Verbal Humor Translation in Friends from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory

Abstract

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