（英语语言文学专业论文）从英文情景喜剧《老友记》看幽默的翻译策略.pdf

i 摘摘 要要 随着中外文化交流不断的加强，越来越多的国外影视作品出现 在中国的荧幕上，一个新的翻译领域影视翻译也就应运而生了。 然而，由于种种历史和现实条件的限制，中国的影视翻译理论研究 相对滞后，就中国目前影视翻译研究的实际情况来看，大多数翻译 论著都只是在个别章节涉及到了影视翻译，其研究结果远不能为影 视翻译建立起一套较为完整的理论体系。 情景喜剧作为一种特殊的影视题材，其中幽默起着至关重要的 作用，而幽默部分的翻译对整部喜剧的翻译起着决定性作用。然而， 幽默却很少被翻译学者当作一个单独的翻译问题来研究。 为了弥补这一缺憾，本文以功能翻译理论为理论框架，对美国 著名情景喜剧老友记中文字幕的翻译进行了个案研究，重点强 调其幽默的翻译。本文以翻译理论中的目的论(skopostheorie)为主要 衡量标准，分析中文字幕是否以及如何在译入语文化中实现其目的， 以及译者在翻译老友记字幕时采取的具体策略及其得失。 字幕翻译同时是一种跨文化的交际活动。在翻译过程中，译者 将原语文化中具有特定意义的符号转换成译语文化中的符号，以达 到跨文化交流的目的。 此外，字幕翻译是文本处理的活动，而这种文本不仅包括语言 的因素，而且包括非语言的因素，字幕翻译要求在特定的历史、社 ii 会、文化情景中，把某些非语言文本因素转化为语言文本因素。作 为一种多媒体，情景喜剧具有多模式文本的特点，作者从语用、符 号两个方面入手，详细探讨了该剧中文字幕翻译的得失，其结果证 明了 toury (1995 )和 venuti (1995)的观点：译者能够积极地、有创造 性地对源语文本进行干预，以达到翻译的目的。 关键词关键词: 影视翻译, 目的论, 文化因素, 多模式文本, 幽默翻译策 略， 老友记 iii abstract with the chinese government attaching growing attention to cross cultural communication, audiovisual culture has played an important role in the cultural exchanges with foreign countries. nowadays more and more foreign movies and tv plays are showed on chinese screen, which calls forth the birth of a new translation field-audiovisual translation. however，due to the restrictions of history and reality, audiovisual translation is still largely unexplored in the field of translation studies. as a special audiovisual genre, english sitcom is featured by humor. undoubtedly, the translation of humor plays a decisive role in creating the desired effect of the comedy in target language audience. however, it has rarely been systematically studied as a specific translation problem. an analysis of the translation of humor could pay handsome dividends. in order to fill this gap, this paper presents a case study by comparing and analyzing the chinese subtitling of the famous american sitcom friends, focusing on the translation of its humor. it aims at exploring various categories of humor in friends and discussing some feasible translation strategies that can be used to guide the practice. functional translation theory provides the theoretical framework to examine the application of the translation strategies in the thesis. the iv author uses skopostheorie as the major criterion for analyzing whether and how the translation serves its given purpose in the tt. according to the theory of translational action, subtitling is also an intercultural action. since subtitling is primarily a cross-culture transfer, the translator has to be aware of the rich points relevant to the subtitling task between the groups or sub-groups on either side of the culture barrier. in addition, audiovisual translation is also a text-processing action, in view of the multimodal nature of multimedia texts, the analysis draws on the model proposed by hatim and mason (1990). following these models, the analysis is divided into two sections: (a) the pragmatic dimension and the semiotic dimension. the conclusion seems to confirm the idea put forward by theorists such as toury (1995) and venuti (1995) that the translator intervenes actively and creatively in the text to make it suit his or her purposes. all in all, the purpose of this study is to analyze whether and how the translator translates in a way that enables the translation to function in the situation in which it is used. it hopes to shed some light on the chinese subtitling of popular tv series. key words: audiovisual translation, skopostheorie, cultural elements, multimodal texts, humor translation, friends v acknowledgements my first thanks go to professor chen demin, my supervisor, without whose generous and persistent assistance all the way along, the completion of this thesis would be impossible. many talks with him have been sources of my inspiration. his challenging questions and suggestive advice have always enlightened me to further thinking of my academic studies as well as my personal life. my sincerest appreciation also goes to all the other faculty members of english department, whose teaching has melted into my life, shaping my ways of thinking as well as living. i also wish to express my acknowledgment to many friends, whose friendship has given me courage and confidence. the list is too long to run full here. last but not least, i am greatly indebted to my mother whose love and encouragement always makes me strong and happy！ 上海交通大学 学位论文原创性声明 上海交通大学 学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的学位论文，是本人在导师的指导下， 独立进行研究工作所取得的成果。除文中已经注明引用的内容外， 本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的作品成果。 对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明确方式 标明。本人完全意识到本声明的法律结果由本人承担。 学位论文作者签名：张永红 日期： 2006 年 3 月 14 日 上海交通大学 学位论文版权使用授权书 上海交通大学 学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规 定，同意学校保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电 子版，允许论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权上海交通大学可以将本学 位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、 缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编本学位论文。 保密保密，在 年解密后适用本授权书。 本学位论文属于 不保密 不保密。 （请在以上方框内打“” ） 学位论文作者签名： 张永红 指导教师签名：陈德民 日期：2006 年 3 月 14 日 日期：2006 年 3 月 14 日 1 chapter i introduction 1.1 research background with the rapid development in science and technology in the modern society, audiovisual media have virtually entered every household and are playing an increasingly important role in our daily lives. “globally, this is the age of mass communications, of multimedia experiences and a world where audiences demand the right to share the latest text, be it film, song, or book simultaneously across cultures.” (lvarez 1996: 1) as hillis miller (1987) points out, “our common culture, however much we might wish it were not so, is less and less a book culture and more and more a culture of cinema, television and popular music,” films and tv plays take a great share in reflecting the culture of a particular society. with its perfect combination with sound and image, audio-visual media have become one of the fastest and the most convenient means of cross-cultural communication. the chinese government has been paying growing attention to the cultural exchanges with foreign countries since it carried out reform and opening-up policy to the outside world. among these cultural exchanges, the exchange of films and tv plays has taken a great share. nowadays more and more foreign movies and tv plays are showed on chinas screen and this trend will surely be reinforced in the future. audiovisual culture, especially film and television culture, has already been promoted to be one of the dominant forms of culture in modern society. extended beyond the field of art, it has become a part of peoples lives and exerted a strong influence on the formation of peoples language, lifestyles, and even values. but on the other hand, due to the fact that few chinese people know english, no matter how wonderful the original english audiovisual works are, they have to be translated before reaching the chinese audience. the 20th century witnessed the birth of an exciting new field in translation studies, that is, audiovisual translation. the term “audiovisual translation” means “the translation of recorded audiovisual material, everything which is presented or regarded as such within the target culture, on whatever grounds” (fotios karamitroglou, 2000: 1-5) 2 however, compared with the wide popularity of films and tv shows, audiovisual translation is still largely unexplored in the field of translation studies. there is an obvious inconsistency between the apparent importance and prevalence of tv subtitling and the limited attention it has so far received. a most persuasive fact is few books and articles published so far in this field. most theories concerned are suggested as fragments on the basis of practical experiences. there are reasons from both history and reality that can account for the current situation. firstly, the history for tv subtitling is not very long and therefore tv subtitling study is still in its infancy. as the beginning is always difficult, it is quite natural that less attention is paid to the theoretical studies on the subtitling of tv comedies. secondly, social scientists tend to select their objects of study on the basis of cultural prestige, rather than intrinsic interest. it is a well-known fact that audiovisual translation has always been considered inferior to written or literary translation, most probably because of the lack of cultural prestige in audiovisual mass-media, compared to canonized literature (ballester cited in fotios karamitroglou, 2000: 10). it is often thought more prestigious to study john milton or william shakespeare than to study popular literature such as mario puzos the godfather, colleen mcculloughs the thorn birds or agatha christies detective stories. a traditional english snobbery puts literary translation on a pedestal and regards other translation as hackwork, or less important, or easier. those who do study subtitling translation would, of course, choose john milton and william shakespeare in preference to soap operas, which, in their minds, are not worth academic attention. furthermore, because of commercial motivation, the quality of movies is often unsatisfactory so that translators are not willing to waste their time and energy on them. therefore, translators are liable to lose enthusiasm in theoretical subtitling studies. in recent years, more studies have been undertaken. however, this is far from being enough. therefore the study of audiovisual translation is of great significance and necessity to the current situation of this field. one culturally significant type of tv play in american is the sitcom, i.e., situation comedy. as the name suggests, these programs feature recurring characters 3 placed in humorous situations. often performed before a live audience (or, in some cases, a simulated live audience in the form of a laugh track), sitcoms are seldom presented as realistic depictions of life but often generate honest laughter through the relationships between and ongoing development of characters. the american tv sitcom friends with creative writing, humor, good acting, and even sometimes morals, has been one of the top tv series and an outstanding achievement for comedy in us since it debuted on national broadcasting company (nbc) first in the fall of 1994. english comedies, especially the tv series (i.e. sitcoms), featured by the mass-media television, characterize humor as either a primary element or a secondary one. undoubtedly, humor plays a critical role in creating and appreciating the general effect of the comedy. it is natural that humor in translation becomes the most decisive factor to the translation as a whole. humor is a pervasive feature of human life which crosses racial, cultural, sexual and class divisions. it is the ability or quality of people, objects or situations to evoke feelings of amusement in other people. if we lived in a world without humor, life would tend to be dull and insipid. the forms which humor take vary considerably, but even the casual observer will recognize a close connection between humor and language. often humor springs directly from language, as in puns and jokes that depend on double entendre. great efforts have been paid to analyze humor from sociological, psychological as well as linguistic perspectives. however, throughout the centuries, it has generated relatively little theoretical interest as a specific translation problem. an analysis of the translation of humor could pay handsome dividends. english comedies, especially the tv series (i.e. sitcoms), featured by the mass-media television, characterize humor as either a primary element or a secondary one. undoubtedly, humor plays a critical role in creating and appreciating the general effect of the comedy. it is natural that humor in translation becomes the most decisive factor to the translation as a whole. the skopostheorie in functional translation states that the purpose of translation is the prime principle of determining any translation process. as that in source language environment, the comedy indicates that the purpose of audiovisual translation is to 4 enable the audience to recognize and appreciate the humor in target language. if the translation cannot fulfill the required humorous effect, or in other words, it cannot elicit laughter in target audience, it should be regarded as a failure. audiovisual translation is not merely a linguistic operation; instead, it is an important form of intercultural communication. as pym (2002a: 189) explains, the simple fact of translation presupposes contact between at least two cultures, and does so in relation to language use, the social activity that perhaps most effectively and insidiously weaves relations of cultural identity. audiovisual translation also involves the translation of texts and intertextuality. these texts can, however, involve the use of signs from different semiotic systems. three central concepts prove to be very useful are: sign, mode, and medium. transferring these concepts to the tv sitcom, it would disseminate a text that involves various aural and visual modes to construct aural-verbal, aural non-verbal, visual- verbal and visual non-verbal messages. therefore, in subtitling, to some extent, there is more than just one source and one target text; instead, various other source texts or models impose themselves or are consciously imposed by the sign-maker-the producer, the screenwriter and/or the distributor-on the translation process, and contribute to the final shape of the target text and all its modes. the role that language takes in multimodal texts is not just pragmatically, but also semiotically determined, and influenced by various models. 1.2 purpose of the research and thesis structure the purpose of this study is to examine whether and how the translator translates in a way that enables the translation to function in the situation in which it is used and with the people who want to use it and precisely in the way they want it to function (vermeer 1989a: 20, translated by nord, as cited in nord 1997b: 29). case studies will be carried out in the research. the overall organization is as follows: chapter 1 is the introduction. chapter 2 is devoted to the introduction of audiovisual translation, with a brief overview (2.1), categories of audiovisual translation (2.2), characteristics and constraints of the audiovisual translation (2.3). chapter 3 introduced some 5 theories of audiovisual translation including, skopostheorie (3.1), transmission of cultural information in subtitling (3.2) and subtitling as text-processing action (3.3). in chapter 4, definition and theories of humor are examined and discussed to see if they might be useful in identifying the problems that translators may come across (4.1). research on translation of humor is then initiated in humor and translation (4.2). special constraints of humor translation in television are also talked about in this part (4.3). chapter 5 is the practical part of my thesis, where translations for american tv comedy friends are collected, reviewed and analyzed, for the purpose of sorting out some feasible translation strategies for different categories of humor in comedies. the author first introduces friends (5.1) and the humor in friends and its translation are discussed in further detail in a separate section (5.2). then the author describes and analyzes specific strategies the translator has adopted when subtitling friends (5.3), especially when translating its humor, in view of the theories discussed in chapter three. finally, chapter 6 serves as the conclusion of this research and it also points out the limitation of the present study and presents some suggestions for future studies on this subject. 1.3 methodology and data collecting a descriptive-contrastive methodology will be adopted in the research. the examples/subtitles concerned are taken from copyrighted dvds1 released in hong kong and taiwan. however, considering the fact that the author and the readers of this paper are more familiar with the simplified characters, all the chinese subtitles will be typed in simplified characters. 1 for this project, i use the dvds distributed by warner home video, warner bro., c2004. 6 chapter ii audiovisual translation 2.1 overview of audiovisual translation traditionally, translation was used to make religious, literary, scientific or philosophical texts available to a wider audience. during the twentieth century however, some new types of material were translated. translation of moving pictures soon became a new area for translation. with the arrival of the sounded movies in the late 1920s, the field of translation of films, which is called audiovisual translation, began in earnest. audiovisual translation has also been called “screen translation” or “film translation”, which means “the translation of recorded audiovisual material, everything which is presented or regarded as such within the target culture, on whatever grounds” (fotios karamitroglou, 2000: 1-5) audiovisual translation, including translation of film and tv, has now developed into an important research area within the general field of translation. one indication of the enormous body of work done in this field is the increasing introduction of foreign-language programs broadcasted by various television channels and films projected in domestic movie theatres. excellent audiovisual translation hence stands out as extremely important in the intercultural communication. audiovisual translation is not a marginal area in translation studies but has been studied on many occasions abroad. research on audiovisual translation has been formally presented in translation journals. take translation journal as an example, many editions, especially those after 2000, set up a special column called “arts and entertainment”, where many essays are devoted to the audiovisual translation studies, covering various aspects of this field, like dr. karamitroglous, a proposed set of subtitling standards in europe. meta and babel are also tw