On Humor Translation In The Subtitling Of English TV Series

This paper is an attempt to investigate into humor translation in subtitling American TV series into Chinese. It sets out, from the perspective of the Reception Theory, a reader-centered theory, which stresses on the active participation of readers in the meaning concretization of a text, to explore the translating strategies in subtitling. Humor translation in TV series, unlike other forms of literary translation, has its own unique characteristics and constraints, which therefore takes the translator's extra efforts to produce simple, clear and adequate target texts.The Reception Theory, the theoretical foundation of this paper, offers translators a good perspective in selecting translation strategies. The process of subtitling on the basis of this theory mainly falls into the following steps—the translator's enhanced pre-understanding of the text, correct anticipation of the audience's Horizon of Expectation, classification of humor relative to the time and space constraints of subtitling, choice of translation strategies and effective rendition. On the basis of these steps, the translator will, to some extent, maximize and re-produce the original aesthetic features to live up to the audience's expectations.