On Subtitling Humorous Dialogues In Friends

Humor plays a very important role in our daily life. We ought to pay more attention to the humor translating in order to share laughter with people over the world. Whereas humor is barely translated as some people says that it's as hard as translating poems. As far as the author is concerned, humor is translatable as long as proper strategies are adopted. In this paper, the author analyzes the American sitcom Friends and its humorous dialogue subtitling by using compensation strategies under the Theory of Functional Equivalence, and points out that compensation is a very effective strategy to convey the humor in the humorous dialogue subtitling.Friends is one of the most attractive American sitcoms. Its humor appealed millions of viewers at home and broad. Many researchers analyzed the subtitles based on linguistic theories such as Relevance Theory, the principle of cooperation and so on. In this paper, the author tries to use Functional equivalence theory to prove the workings of compensation strategy in humorous dialogue subtitling in Friends. The Theory of Functional Equivalence means proximity and closeness in "readers'responses" and it also explains the translatability of culture. It is the equivalence not only between two languages, but also between the implied meanings of the two languages.East-West cultural differences in both languages lead to the phenomenon of "default" as translating is carried on. Thus the target language readers tend to have blanks in understanding the translation. In Friends, there are a lot of characteristics in both American language and culture, which are not easy to be translated within its subtitling. The author indicates that literal translation is not adaptable in humor translating. In contrast, free translation with the use of compensation strategy, can fill almost all the blanks in the target language. Furthermore, the target language viewers will get the same or at least the closest responses with the source language viewers when humor is conveyed. The author then puts forward three principles when compensation strategy is used. Compensation strategy won't be used correctly or properly without following the three principles. The author notices the limitations also in using compensation strategy in humorous dialogue subtitling.In conclusion, the author intends to analyze the humorous dialogue subtitling in Friends by using compensation strategy under the Theory of Functional Equivalence. In this paper, the relationship between the Theory of Functional Equivalence and the strategy of compensation is analyzed and then three principles are put forward in order to use compensation strategy correctly and properly.