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The paper is pided into five chapters. The first chapter is an introduction of the paper. The second chapter introduces the characteristics of American sitcom subtitle. The third chapter analyzes the factors which affect the translation of humorous language in American sitcom subtitle. The fourth chapter proposes specific translation strategies of humorous language in American sitcoms by taking Friends as an example. The last chapter is a conclusion of the whole paper.
II. The Characteristics of American Sitcom Subtitle
2.1 Instantaneity
Just like film subtitles, American sitcom subtitle is also restricted by time and space. In space, subtitles are not more than two lines on the screen; In time, the retention period of subtitles on the screen is usually between 2-7 seconds. Within a short span of a few seconds, subtitles have to help the audience understand the content and appreciate the plot. This increases the difficulty of subtitle translation. Therefore, conciseness and simplicity are the most basic requirements of TV drama subtitle translation, to make the audience easy to understand the plot, on the basis of not affecting the audience’s visual enjoyment and taste of foreign culture.
2.2 Colloquialism
American sitcom subtitles reflect the reality of the daily work and life, such as “friends”, “desperate housewives”, “modern family” and so on, so the language is more authentic American English. There are concise simple words and sentence patterns, grammar casuality, and a lot of slang, idioms and abbreviations. In addition, numerous characters, each character and personality is distinct, use language and each has its own characteristics. The character's background, age, level of education, such as different characteristics also contributed to the tone from the pronunciation, words to persification. Therefore, subtitle translation is not only to fully embody the characteristics of spoken, but also conforms to the characteristics of the characters.
2.3 Humor
Like most Americans, most of the drama language is given priority to a witty humor. Different humor and each has different characters, some of them are through language others through unique facial expressions or body language to express. Watching American sitcom is not only a kind of learning, is also a kind of recreational activities. In subtitle translation, the translator should adopt a variety of flexible approach conveys the sense of humor, let the audience to appreciate American humor in life.
As is mentioned in the introduction, sitcoms characterize humor as either a primary element or a secondary one and humor plays a critical role in creating and appreciating the general effect of comedy. But due to special characteristics of sitcoms, humor in sitcoms all has its own features.
In sitcoms, humor is a crucial factor, a motor that propels us from one sequence to another. Of course, the translation of humor in sitcoms plays a significant role in creating the overall humorous effect for the target audience. In our daily life, it could be argued that most humor is spontaneous and unintentional. But in sitcoms, humor doesn’t result from conscious intellectual endeavor, even if it sometimes comes in the guise of spontaneity.
Humor as entertainment in general and humor in sitcoms in particular could be described as a specific genre. Therefore, the audience has certain genre-based expectations towards it. When a viewer switches to watch a sitcom, he or she expects to see a program punctuated with one-liners and funny situations, where humor is signposted for the viewer with canned laughter. It could be said that even here the laughter depends on some sort of framework of expectancy. The purpose of sitcom translation is to achieve the equivalent humor maximally in the target language. Only if the translation functions well as humor-inducing element in audience does it succeed as a translation, which is also a criterion to measure whether the translation is effective or not.