An Anaslysis of Subtitling Humor from English into Persian
Keywords:
Audiovisual Translation, Humor translation, Subtitling, Subtitling StrategiesAbstract
Humor is a distinct form of communication that plays a crucial role in human interaction and cultural expression, particularly within the realm of audiovisual media. This research will subsequently be focused on humor translation in subtitled films, considering movies such as Deadpool and Wolverine, The Fall Guy, and Hit Man. The central question pursued in the paper is how humor could be effectively translated across cultures, which calls for the formulation of the following two research questions: What are the most and least frequent strategies used when subtitling humor? Which strategies are most effective for translating each type of humor? The present paper is based on Debra and Raphaelson-West’s (1989) framework and Translation Strategies for Subtitling Films by Gottlieb (2001). To attain its aims, the present descriptive and analytical research resorted to a step-by-step watching of each movie for the identification of humorous parts, followed by a careful consideration of the English dialogues against their Persian subtitles. The results showed that transfer was the most frequent strategy and condensation was the least frequent. These findings will add to the existing knowledge of humor translation strategies and hopefully prove helpful to both translators and researchers in the field of translation studies.
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