A Project Report On Subtitle Translation Of American Sitcom The Big Bang Theory

With further acceleration of globalization, more and more foreign audio-visual works have flooded into the Chinese market, among which a typical representative is the American situation comedy. The American situation comedy is an important channel to cultural communication and spread between China and Western countries while its subtitle translation plays a vital role in receiving popularity among overseas market and conducting cross-cultural communication. A high-quality subtitling enables people from different cultural background to share the same humor in one sitcom.This is a translation project report on analysis of subtitle text from American situation comedy The Big Bang Theory (Season 3). The author encounters three major difficulties in the process of translating subtitle:the translation of American humor, the translation of scientific terminologies and the translation of culture-loaded words. This American situation comedy consists of three kinds of humor, namely universal humor, linguistic humor and cultural humor. With the help of Skopostheorie and analysis of the features of subtitle translation, the author figures out several practical translation techniques to address such difficulties. The author holds the view that translators should take the reproduction of comic effect of the source text as the chief principle and select proper translation methods to tackle its unique American humor, scientific background and culture-bound words in order to make the target viewers enjoy this sitcom in line with their expectations and the cultural customs. The Big Bang Theory stands out from other American TV shows for its unique theme, humorous dialog and typical character personality. Thereby, this report selects this sitcom as research object in the hope of providing some useful tips to other translators who are resolved to working in the sitcom subtitle translation.