Context And Translation Of Humorous Elements In Comedv Films

With ever increasing cultural exchanges between countries, more and more foreign films are entering the Chinese market, which leads to more attention paid to both theoretical and practical study of subtitle translation. English comedy films are especially favored by Chinese audience because of their unique humorous effects, which also constitute a huge barrier for the audience’s watching experience when not fully conveyed into the target language. This thesis applies the pragmatic approach to subtitle translation to the subtitle translation of comedy films. Different from past studies of translation from the perspective of a particular pragmatic theory, this thesis starts from the analysis of context, the most basic concept in pragmatics, and then the author classifies humor into three different types, i.e. humor in dynamic context, humor in static context and humor in mixed context. This thesis analyzes in a detailed and comprehensive manner the context of each example of humor from Four Weddings and a Funeral, comments on the subtitle translation from the perspective of pragmatic equivalence, and offers corresponding strategies for the translation of each type of humor. It is hoped that this study will help to convey humors in subtitles to the target language audience, improve their cinema experience and promote cultural exchanges.