The Reception Of Humor Translation In Sitcom Subtitling

In recent years,subtitling is attracting more and more attention from scholars in the field of translation.Humor translation is an important and difficult element in subtitling.At present,researches on humor translation in subtitling mainly concern translation quality or strategies.Few researches carried out from the perspective of target language audience can be found.Target language audience,as the ultimate recipients of subtitling,should be taken into serious consideration when carrying out researches on humor translation in subtitling of sitcoms.In view of this,under the theoretical guidance of humor theory and reception theory,the current study took the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory(hereinafter referred to as TBBT)as the research material and explored whether there is any relationship between compliance with reception theory in humor translation and target language audience's reception of the humor translation.Firstly,this study classified the humor in TBBT into: cultural humor,linguistic humor,universal humor and humor related to science.Then,an analysis about whether the humor translation complied with reception theory was conducted.After that,questionnaires exploring the target language audience's reception of the humor translation were administered.Target language audience's reception of humor translation was explored based on the collected data.Finally,a correlation study was carried out to investigate whether there was any relationship between compliance with reception theory in humor translation and target language audience's reception of humor translation.The current study found that the degree of compliance with reception theory in humor translation correlated with target language audience's reception of the humor translation in the subtitles of TBBT.The study also proved that a better reception of humor translation could be achieved when target language audience's cultural awareness,aesthetic taste and psychological cognition were taken into consideration and their expectation of horizon was met in humor translation.Furthermore,target language audience's reception of the four types of humor varied,with the highest reception value in humor related to science and the lowest reception value in linguistic humor.