Humor translation in American sitcom: a case study on Chinese translation of Modern family

Abstract

Research and studies on humor translation of television subtitles are of much importance, and also have a great influence on intercultural communication and exchange. Over the years, many scholars studied humor translation from various perspectives and analyzed how linguistic and cultural barriers can be surmounted to convey and reproduce the same or similar humorous effect. However, relevant studies on translation with consideration of speaker’s idiolect, and analyses of the entertainment trend in humor translation are still not sufficient. Understanding idiolects of different characters help improve the plot development, and enrich the character images, but, in reality, such function and importance of rendering humor with consideration of different idiolect of each character have been neglected in many circumstances. Besides, the entertainment trend that appeared in the translation of humor in sitcoms has been a phenomenon in China that cannot be ignored. The influence of using stereotypical and formulated popular expressions to render humor is not clear and still needs further study. The author analyzes humor translation of one American sitcom based on Christiane Nord’s functionalist approach and examines the humor translation of different characters by analyzing their distinctive idiolect. Besides, the author analyzes the entertainment trend in humor translation of the sitcom, trying to provide a new lens for research of humor translation in television works.