A Study Of Humor Translation Of Sitcom From The Perspective Of Gutt’s Relevance Translation Theory

Based on Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory, Gutt put forward relevancetranslation theory which provides a novel perspective for translation. This dissertation aimsat applying relevance translation theory to humor translation in sitcoms.Humor, as a universal language, plays a very important role in our daily life. Althoughplenty has been said about humor by scholars of the world in various fields, translationhumor study focuses on the written or the verbally expressed humor but little attention hasbeen put on humor on the TV screen, which is characterized by a multi-semioticconstitution, which led humor translation in sitcoms In recent years, an increasing numberof sitcoms from foreign countries have been presented to Chinese audience throughdubbing and subtitling, which have aroused great interest and attracted an enthusiasticfollowing in China. The situation sitcom on TV has won popularity with a wide audiencebecause of its humorous lines and vivid characterization. The point of this dissertation is tostudy how and to what extent that humor in sitcoms can overcome the linguistic andcultural barriers when translating into other languages. As we know, humor in sitcomsdiffers from traditional humor, while latter one is expressing humor in written texts.Translating humor in sitcoms is more complicated and has a more diverse set of challenges.Within the framework of Gutt’s relevance translation theory, this dissertation has pointedout the importance of the relevance translation theory to humor translation, and explainedthe translatability of the humor translation from perspective of relevance translation theory,especially humorous utterance with cultural and linguistic elements. According to Gutt’stheory, the translator should not only analyze the cognitive environment of the originalwriter and make a correct inference of humor from the original text, but also take the targetaudience’s cognitive environment into consideration in the process of translation. So longas the translator can reconstruct the optimal relevance regarding culture and language inthe target utterance by maintaining the communicative clues of original text or makingsome changes ad the source audience, that is to say, the humorous effect in the sourceutterance has been retained. This dissertation analyzes sitcom Growing Pains to applyrelevance translation theory to humor translationThis dissertation is composed of five chapters. Chapter One introduces the causes,aim, significance and means of the study. It reiterates the necessity and importance of thestudy of humor translation in sitcoms from the trans-cultural perspective, using Gutt’srelevance translation theory. Chapter Two introduces the frame of Gutt’s relevancetranslation theory and a few essential concepts of Gutt’s theory in translation, such as theinferential nature of the communication, interpretice use of language, and communicativeclues. Then under the guidance of Gutt’s theory, translation can be regarded as a doubleostensive-inferential process. Chapter Three introduces main features of sitcoms. Frequentamusing conflicts, humorous and colloquial lines are main features make sitcoms different from other TV genres and literature works. Chapter Four analyses humor translation insitcom Growing Pains in the frame of Gutt’s relevance translation theory, especially in theperspective of verbal humor. Under the guidance of the direct and indirect translationapproaches, the dissertation analyses universal humor, language specific humor andcultural specific humor to find that Gurr’s relevance translation theory is optimumtranslation method to explain verbal humor translation in sitcoms. Chapter Five is theconclusion of the dissertation. It starts with a brief review of what we have talked so far. Atthe same time, it reiterates it academic significant. In the end, it point out the limitation ofthe dissertation and the area where further research may be carried out.