Abstract and Key Words

Abstract：This thesis, taking the popular American sitcom Friends as an example, aims at exploring various categories of sitcom humor and discussing some feasible translation strategies and means in light of the framework of translation variation theory. The subtitling of the whole ten-season sitcom is actually a literary form of translating. However, this kind of translation is limited by many additional factors like space and time since it’s going to be shown on the TV not the book. This thesis is going to compare two kinds of translation to elaborate some translation strategies of sitcoms. Although it may not be very comprehensive, and there can hardly be a standard for sitcom translation, this thesis is to render some insight into how subtitlers operate in the audiovisual medium and thus offer some help to Chinese subtitlers in their subtitling work.
  
Key Words : humor; humor translation; sitcom; subtitling

摘要：情景喜剧是一种源于美国,热播全球的独特艺术形式。剧集中口语化的幽默常常引经据典,妙语连珠。每次幽默都会伴随灌装笑声以引起观众的共鸣。然而,由于语言和文化背景的差异,在引进情景喜剧时,源语言文化中的幽默常常在译制过程中面目全非,造成目的观众在听到灌装笑声,看着屏幕上的字幕时却不知所云。本文运用描述翻译研究的方法，通过对美国情景喜剧《老友记》的两个版本的字幕的比较，从情景喜剧中英语幽默(包括语内幽默和语际幽默)的翻译入手，对字幕翻译从理论到实践作了初步探讨，剖析了现在字幕翻译领域存在的问题，影响字幕翻译工作者做出翻译决策的各种原因以及制约他们选择翻译策略的规范。本文旨在抛砖引玉，望能为影视翻译研究带来一些启发，使其更好地发挥跨文化交际的功能。

关键词：幽默;幽默翻译;情景喜剧;字幕

Sitcom is a short form for situation comedy which is a humorous television program. It is based on situations that could arise in everyday life according to the American Heritage Dictionary. It is a genre of comedy first originated on radio but today mainly found on TV. There is usually a fixed set of cast with one or more humorous storylines centered in certain situations, such as a family home, an office and so on.
 Since the opening-up policy was carried out in China, with the rapid development of science and technology in the modern society, large numbers of foreign movies and TV plays have been imported into China and shown on China's screen ,including numerous of sitcoms. 
Friends , one of the most popular sitcoms in US, have finished its 10th Season. It has millions of fans over 60 countries. In addition to the excellent performance  of  its  actors  and  actresses,  the  basic  reason  for its popularity consists in its humorous language. But the great differences in culture between China and America and the characteristics of subtitling make the translation task far from easy. Especially with much canned laughter, humor would be lost if the translator fails to make Chinese viewers laugh at the same time. Attempts have been made to analyze humor from the perspectives of sociology, psychology as well as linguistics; however, humor has rarely been systematically studied as a specific translation problem.