Chuyên đề tốt nghiệp: A study on Translation Strategies of Humor in Subtitling the series How I met your mother

The studycomments on the tendency of Business English fourth-year students at NationalEconomics University to translate humorous elements and the factors influencingtheir decision based

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NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS ENGLISH

Hanoi, April 2023

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NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS ENGLISH

Supervisor: M.A Le Thu Huong

Hanoi, April 2023

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Nguyễn Thanh Tú — 11195556 — Business English 61A

Firstly, I want to express my gratitude to my supervisor, MA Le Thu

Huong has supported me not only with many important recommendations and

comments but also with many valuable materials Without her helpful guidance, Iwould not be able to complete this important paper

Secondly, thanks to my friends and teammates, for their advice andencouragement during my writing process because they are faithfully willing toanswer my questions and provide me with useful information to complete thisthesis

Last but not least, I would like to express my gratefulness to my parentswho always support and create good conditions for me to attentively completethis graduation paper

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Because of the linguistic and cultural barriers between the two languages,humor is a translation problem that is both interesting and challenging for atranslator A successful humor translation can not only convey a message butalso evoke laughter in the audience Humor is a difficult element to translate, but

it is quite common in movie subtitles, particularly in comedies The studycomments on the tendency of Business English fourth-year students at NationalEconomics University to translate humorous elements and the factors influencingtheir decision based on specific research on humor in 10 episodes selected fromthe series "How I met your mother."

The research results were analyzed based on the questionnaire responses

of 100 final-year students of the Business English Department from NationalEconomics University

Data analysis provides research findings for the three factors listed below.Popular humor categories All five types of humor are used in the series “How

I met your mother” but with different frequencies

Humor translation strategy application The student’s choice of translationmethod varies according to the type of humor and the complexity of the

language

Factors influencing humor translation choice Each translation method has

different groups of influencing factors with varying degrees of influence

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Popular humor categories in selected episOdes << ««s<s« 11

Figure 2 HT choices of the fourth-year BE students for Sample 1 13

Figure 5 HT choices of the fourth-year BE students for sample 9 18

Figure 7 Factors influencing the fourth-year students of BE department at NEU to choose suSfÏẦUfÏOT 5-5 5< < 5< sọ Họ In 00000996 20 Figure 8 Factors influencing the fourth-year students of BE department at NEU to choose eXpÌÏCfAfÏOT, 0< 55 5s Họ 0000000006896 21 Figure 9 Factors influencing the fourth-year students of BE department at NEU 0 ChO0se lan, 05-5 5< 65 E5 5 9 59 009.00 00 009 009 00960400996 22 Figure 10 Factors influencing the fourth-year students of BE department at NEU to choose addÏ(ÏOD 5-5 5< < 5< 5< 008009105 004004088 00 23 Figure 11 Factors influencing the fourth-year students of BE department at NEU to choose Compensation .ccssscsssscsssscssccsssccssccssssssssssssssssscsssssssssssssssscees 24 Figure 12 Factors influencing the fourth-year students of BE department at NEU to choose literal translation cccccsscsscsssscscsssssssssssssssssssscsssssssssessnssees 25 Figure 13 Factors influencing the fourth-year students of BE department at li 100v: 0((-:20./).))0.77777Ẽ 7 26

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMA RYY 5 <5 5G 9 %9 9 G1 00.0960040.04 04006 i

LIST OF ABBREVIA TIONS (GỌI ngu g0 ii

LIST OF FIGURES do 55G 55s 9 9 H0 909.9104010000008098898 86 iii

2.2.3 Humor Translation SÍTaf€ØÏS <5 << 5s 9 58956989 6856 82.2.4 Factors that influence the choice of HT strategies - 9

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS cscsssssssscsssssscsseccssenseneeneeee 11

3.1 Popular types of humor in 10 selected episodes of the seriesH002 ÔÔÔ 11

3.2 Strategies that the fourth-year students of BE department at NEUapply to translate those humorous elements into Vietnamese 12

3.2.1 S4T'C/ASIH G5 9 99 9 0 0 000 4.000 0.00040000040000 80 123.2.2 ÍTOITV 0G S Họ cụ 0 0 T0 000 00.0004 0000040000919 153.2.3 T€ASÏTE o cọc Ọ Họ TH T000 000000900990 163.2.4 JOKS GG cỌ cọ Họ TH HC TH 0 0 0900000004009 000060906090 163.2.5 WVOTDÌAY 0G (G5 9 9 9 9 0 0 000 00009.004.080 4009090890 17

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3.3 Factors influencing the HT choices of the fourth-year students of BEdepartment at NEU . 5 5- << 5< s9 TH 9.0000 00008908896 20

3.3.1 SubSfÏẨUẨÏOTI -.5- <5 << G000 0084600088 86 203.3.2 EXDÌÏCAfÏOIN G5 S9 9 cọ 0 0.00004000090690 21

CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSIONN GHI HH HH HH 0408900 28

4.1 Summary of the research < <6 << %9 98994 9899968945656956669666956 28

4.2 The limitation of the research os- s55 555555555 895656 6956 284.3 Recommendation for further sfUÏÏ€S s5- <5 5< 55s sessse<se 29REEERENCES o GHI HH CC HH 0.00005000000150 30APPENDIX 1: CATEGORIES OF HUMOR IN 10 SELECTED EPISODES

OF THE SERIES “HIMYM” cssssssssssscsssssscsscscssecsecscesessscssssecssssssesssseese 32

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Background

As a result of the rapidly increasing ways of international communication,people from different nations can simply communicate with each other In cross-cultural communications, culture plays an important role in effectivecommunication because cultural diversity has produced differences in terms of

languages

Moreover, in the era of globalization, people are easily exposed to variouscultures all over the world through the influence of multimedia Films, one of themost accessible forms of media, can portray the cultural aspects of a country.Films are also a kind of communication for the screenwriter to tell people abouthis/her ideas and stories However, the popularity of movies cannot eliminatecultural differences and language barriers between countries

Comedies are generally well-received for their entertainment, but there are

still cultural barriers for foreign viewers to fully understand the humorous

elements Among other sociocultural factors such as geography, history, customs,

or rituals, humor is considered a sensitive element in communication Jokes can

be understood differently in different countries In some circumstances, a joke inone country can be unintelligible or inappropriate in another

One strategy for bridging cultural distance and improving understanding

in international communication is translation As digital technology progresses,people have three methods of audiovisual translation including subtitling,dubbing, and voice-overing Subtitling humor creates many obstacles for novicetranslators Without verbal expression, the words chosen by the translator notonly indicate the semantic aspect but also convey the humor of the sentence.Generally, humor translation requires translators to use different translationtechniques, which is not competent for translation beginners

2 Rationale

The success of a comedy largely depends on how well its humor canspread laughter to the audience Foreign audiences who do not have much

knowledge of English are heavily dependent on translations to understand the

film’s content Therefore, satisfactory subtitling not only states the semantic

content of the dialogue but also conveys the speaker's thoughts, and the emotionsthat the screenwriter wants to evoke in the listener Specifically, the humorouselement is expected to bring laughter to audiences and show its messages such as

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sarcasm or irony Moreover, the comedy lines also reveal the character'spersonality Each character in comedy has unique personality traits, so theirhumor-related expressions are generally diverse

However, humor is culture-specific, so in some circumstances, it cannot

be simply translated word by word for foreign audiences to understand It iseasier for translators to do their jobs if they are familiar with the foreign culture

of the film Cultural diversity causes a lack of terms, and differences inmetaphors make it difficult to render some humorous lines HT also requirestranslators to understand the communication context and the hidden purposes ofthe speaker Therefore, it is necessary for translators to analyze the humor linesand consider suitable translation strategies for different situations If the humorcannot be fully conveyed, it may cause viewers confusion or misinterpretation ofthe film's content Generally, HT in subtitling is a big challenge for translators,especially for beginners They lack in-depth cultural understanding andexperience in dealing with various types of HT

All of these factors influenced the researcher's decision to pursue the topic

"A study on Translation Strategies of Humor in Subtitling the series “How I met

b How do the fourth-year students of the Business English Department at

National Economics University apply translation strategies to translatethose humorous elements into Vietnamese?

c What are the factors influencing their HT strategy choices?

4 Scope of the research

In the process of making subtitles, translators may have to deal withhumorous lines regardless of the genre of the film In particular, in comedies, thefrequency of humorous dialogues is denser than in other film genres Because oftime limitations, this study only focuses on analyzing how the fourth-yearstudents of the BE Department at NEU apply translation strategies of humor in

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subtitling Additionally, those humorous elements appear in 10 selected episodes

of the comedy series “HIMYM”

A data-collecting activity involves collecting and categorizing humorous

elements from 10 selected episodes of the series “HIMYM” The process of

categorizing humorous elements is based on the framework of previous studieswhich are proposed in the next chapter Concerning the typology of humor used

in the selected videos, the model of Tengku (2020) will be used to differentiatevarious types of humor present

Questionnaire

The main advantages of questionnaires are that they can save time andmoney for researchers because a large amount of data can be gathered at onceand generate greater honesty among participants without fear that theirinformation will be leaked thanks to anonymity compared to interviews,according to Cohen, Manion & Morrison (2000) However, due to a largenumber of participants, some might not return the questionnaire to the researcher.This issue can be resolved by close administration of questionnaires to bringabout a high response rate to enhance accuracy and reliability for the results ofthe research The purpose of the questionnaire in this paper is to measure thereception of 100 fourth-year BE students at NEU to humor translationrequirements to find out whether they prefer a humor translation strategy to the

other in dealing with different types of humor and various linguistic features

The researcher conducts a questionnaire survey, whose participants are

100 fourth-year students of the BE Department at NEU Due to personalconnection, questionnaires will be delivered, and data will be collected faster

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Moreover, the series targets young adults who are trying to establish themselves

in society and find the love of their life, similar to the main characters throughout

the nine seasons As a matter of fact, fourth-year students mostly aged 22 andabove, belong to the main segment of the target audience Therefore, thequestionnaire participants satisfy the requirement of falling into the age group ofthe target audience Both males and females will be included in the surveywithout bias

Based on the list of humorous elements collected from 10 selected

episodes of the series “HIMYM”, the questionnaire provides 10 samples of

humorous text for the participants to render In each previously synthesizedhumor group, the study selects 2 dialogues to serve as translation samples.Concerned about the survey participants’ lack of understanding of the film, theauthor selected 10 accessible samples which do not require them to know thefilm’s characters, the dialogue contexts, or some American cultural features thatmay appear in the samples

For each text, the participants need to answer 2 multiple-choice questionsabout their HT choice and reasons for their translation decisions They are alsoencouraged to suggest other answers not listed in the questionnaire based on theirown experience during humor subtitling The suggested answers are given in thequestion of HT method built on Hoa's theory of HT method (2018) In eachsample, the author only proposes the most feasible methods, but does not list all

HT strategies The author does not use the terminology of HT methods to assist

survey students in easily accessing the question and to bring more practicality to

the survey Instead, the author explains how to use the method for each example

in the most concise way

b Data analysisBoth qualitative and quantitative analysis is used to get a complete picture

of the problem Qualitative analysis is applied to classify the humorous elements,which have been mentioned in the collection phase The categorized result willassist to answer the first research question

The survey's recorded responses are subjected to statistical analysis Theinformation gathered from the surveys is numerically recorded The descriptivemethod is exploited to indicate the phenomena and identify trends according tothe survey data The results of the survey analysis will respectively answer theremaining two research questions

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

Raskin (1985) states that humor is “a universal human trait”, which means

a phenomenon that is closely related to every angle of human life such asphilosophy, psychology, aesthetic value, ethical standards, etc As Phanchalee(2017) demonstrates, defining humor as a theoretical concept is difficult Theyexplained that humor has existed along with the evolution of human civilization,

so humor also changes when culture transforms As a result, all aspects of cultureincluding belief, history, knowledge, and morals are reflected in humor Gan(2023) defines humor as a confluence of thought, knowledge, quality,intelligence, and wit in language In terms of humor text, he analyzed humor inlinguistic and cultural aspects Linguistic humor is a verbal one, which isexpressed by language or words while cultural humor is the reflection of theculture in humor

Yang (2020) describes humor as a phenomenon that greatly impactshuman life Humor plays a role in human daily communication and interpersonalrelationship However, it is various because of the differences in personal tastes,ages, and cultures From a psychological perspective, Jessica (2013) claims thathumor is a sudden sense of joy or excitement brought on by comical stimulation.According to Vandaele (2013), humor is simply a catalyst in human feeling,which arouses amusement and makes people laugh

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Monro (1953) offers conventional categories of humor based on what

individuals find hilarious, such as any disruption of the typical sequence of

events, non-sense, small misfortunes, and indecency In terms of the resources ofhumor, Zijderveld (1983) divides humor into four types including exploitation oflanguage (wordplay, spoonerisms), exploitation of logic (wit, elephant jokes),exploitation of emotions (black humor), and everyday life activities (black

humor)

Alharthi (2016) divides humor into two units: humor with culturalreferences and language-based humor In the criteria of humor forms, the authoralso categorizes humor into thirteen types: jokes, wordplay (pun), irony, parody,satire, sarcasm, spoonerism, self-denigrating humor, retort, teasing, banter,

register clash, and catchphrases However, when studying subtitling humor,

Tengku (2020) concludes that there are five major humor categories includingjokes, wordplay, irony, sarcasm, and teasing Certain categories from thepreviously given taxonomy will be used in the analysis of the humor in "How Imet your mother."

Joke, according to Dynel (2009), consists of two elements: the built-up andpunchline, which resolve the contrariety to make the audience laugh Generally,the aim of telling jokes is to evoke amusement and laughter

Delabastita, (1996) states that wordplay is the intentional use of linguistic

terms with similar forms and different meanings to elicit a particular effect on the

audience Wordplay is divided into four types: homonymy, homophony,

homograph, and paronym

It is common to confuse irony with sarcasm because both of them have ameaning which is opposite to the use of the word (Hoa, 2018) However, they

differ in their goal of influencing the recipients While irony arouses amusement,

sarcasm is told to mock or convey contempt

Alharthi (2016) defines teasing as “any playful remark aimed at anotherperson” The purpose can be negative such as to upset the target listener orhostile such as to make others respond in “a playful manner’ In general, teasing

is given to a certain one and expects to receive their reaction

2.2 Humor Translation

2.2.1 Definition

Translation has been a popular discussion topic for numerous authors indifferent research According to Eugene (1959), translation involves rendering

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the original text to the TL in the most equivalent way in terms of both meaningand style Bell, R (1991) also discussed translation as the process of idea

generation in the TL which is expressed through the relevance of semantics and

stylistics in the SL

Tanaporn (2011) claims that translation is a strategy for bridging the

difference among people from countries and improving their cross-culturalunderstanding When defining translation, Maharani and Ediwan (2019)

concentrate on the translation’s product and process “The product refers to the

result of translation from the source language to the target language, whilethe process refers to the activity of translating the source language into the

TL.”

Each sentence has its own purpose, which can be not only to express the

idea but also to arouse the emotion of the readers Humor is a typical example

“During the translating process, translators are expected not to reduce anymeaning effect or equivalent reaction” (Yang, 2020) Vandaele (2002) describes

HT as a special type of translation Because of its qualitative features, HT cannot

be written similarly to others

2.2.2 Constraints

Maharani and Ediwan (2019) insist that “translating humor is not an easy

matter” because translators may struggle with understanding the humor’s

purposes and finding equivalent vocabularies and terminologies Yang (2020)claims that a lack of specific cultural knowledge leads to difficulty in the HT.Two dilemmas that translators often struggle with are also listed in the research,which are "the risk of leaving out information" and “load too many explicatory

footnotes into the text.”

Jascha (2012) states that one of the biggest barriers for translators in HT ishow they perceive humor When the humor brings joy to the translators, it may

be easier for them to convey the emotion in their translation results However, itcan be a distraction during the translation process if the translator is too

immersed in his or her emotions The author also mentions some common

problems that translators often face when processing humorous text such as no

exact equivalent and over-explaining

Alharthi (2016) relies on the relationship between humor, language, andculture to provide HT common problems Some humor in the TL does not sharethe same understanding in the SL Some humor in SL also contains culturally

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inappropriate components, which transgresses the social and moral rules in TL

According to Alharthi, the difficulty of HT not only originates from the cultural

gap existing in the text but also comes from the recipients’ knowledge

deficiency

In terms of HT in audiovisual work, Gan (2023) agrees with other

researchers that linguistic and cultural factors make the HT process difficult Theauthor also offered the time and space limitation of subtitles as HT constraints

“Humor in audiovisual translation is limited by film genre, language, and writing style.” The traits and prior knowledge of the audience must also be considered

while translating a film

2.2.3 Humor Translation strategies

In an article about the challenges of translating humor, Jascha (2012)advises humor translators to be creative and flexible in transforming humor “toabandon the idea of perfect fidelity and instead try to find a joke that rings some

of the same bells as the original By this standard, many simple punch lines, fromthe morbid to the absurd, are not that much harder to translate than the weather."

In terms of translating cinematic products, ten translation strategies forsubtitling were proposed by Gottlieb (1992) Those translating methods includeexpansion, paraphrase, transfer, imitation, transcription, dislocation,condensation, decimation, deletion, and resignation These proposed typologies,however, are of relatively broad scope, implying that they are approaches fordealing with translation issues in general Hence, more relevant factors areneeded for the investigation, with a particular focus on translating humorous

aspects.

Studying HT in subtitling, Hoa (2018) provides eight translation strategies

that are quite comprehensive to the research topic (omission, loan, literaltranslation, explication, substitution, lexical recreation, compensation, andaddition)

This list of translation strategies is considered to be comprehensive to the

HT topic because it includes the "omission” strategy Although “omission” raises

an argument that it can be considered a translation strategy or not, it is a specialone in HT field In HT, some humor does not have the equivalent terms in TL,and its role in the context is not important Therefore, “omission” can helptranslators deal with those types of humor as well as save their time andsubtitling space by removing parts of the text that cannot be rendered

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Transferring a term or phrase from the SL to the TL while retaining the

"foreignness" is referred to as loan By preserving the distinctive cultural context

of the source material, this technique aims to bring audiences close to the originalculture Loan will be useful and effective if the target audience is familiar with

the original culture

By the literal translation method, translators prioritize conveying meaningthan keeping the word order and sentence structure On the other hand, “Addition

as a translation strategy is the act of adding the effect which is absent in sourcelanguage.”

Explication is a technique used by translators to make a subject easier for

the audience to understand, typically by employing superordinate terminology In

other words, the SL word is translated with another more suitable or more

general and concise in the TL

Compensation is often used in translating texts that have humorous effects(pun) In compensation, translators keep the SL text's humorous effect buttransform it into a different expression in TL

Substitution is often used to overcome media-specific constraints such asthe limitation of time and space Substitution is defined as translating the SL

terms into an equivalent in the TL which is easier to read or shorter to write

although it can be understood right away when keeping the word in the TL (e.g.,

hamburger — bánh kẹp)

When translating neologisms from the source language to the targetlanguage, translators frequently opt for lexical creation Neologisms are new

words or new meanings of existing words

2.2.4 Factors that influence the choice of HT strategies

Besides finding ways to solve HT problems, some researchers alsoinvestigate factors influencing the choice of HT strategies Yang (2020) claimsthat entertainment trends have a great influence on translation decisions becausetaking advantage of them can attract the attention of audiences, especially youngpeople After assessing in detail, the factors affecting the translation of each type

of humor, Alharthi (2016) sums up numerous parameters influencing thetranslation decision such as media-specific constraints (time and space

limitations), lack of phonetic and semantic similarity between SL and TL,avoiding repetition, taboo words, etc

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Tanaporn (2011) points out two main groups of factors affecting thechoice of translation including linguistic factors and cultural factors Each ofthem can be classified into sub-units Linguistic factors consist of phonologicalfactors, lexical factors, syntactic factors, and semantic factors On the other hand,cultural factors consist of the universal sense of humor, culture-specificexpressions, ethical restrictions in the TL, jargon, and period style

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CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

This chapter will present survey data that has been processed andexamined in the form of charts and tables

3.1 Popular types of humor in 10 selected episodes of the series “HIMYM”

Based on the information collected from the table Categories of humor in

10 selected episodes of the series “HIMYM” in Appendix 1, the chart below iscreated

Figure 1 Popular humor categories in selected episodes

The graph presents the frequency of humor types in 10 selected episodes

of the series “HIMYM.” It is noticeable that the distribution of humor varieties isquite inconsistent when the difference in quantity between the most and leastpopular is considerable Irony, which is used the most by the students to arouselaughter from the audience, has 52 times appearing, equivalent to about 44percent of the corpus The least popular humor category is sarcasm, which

appears only 6 times and accounts for 5 percent of the corpus The number of

irony appearing across 10 episodes of different seasons is greater than 10 timesthat of sarcasm However, it can be seen that all five humor types listed in thetaxonomy of Tengku (2020) are employed in comedy with different quantities

Trony is the most prevalent type of humor in the corpus because it is easierfor translators to gain the amusement of audiences through irony without anycomplex requirements Furthermore, irony is appropriate to utilize humor from

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the character's personality in comedy As typical comedy series, the film createscharacters with exaggerated personalities, which are reflected in their lines,gestures, and expressions The characters’ words frequently contradict theiractions in many segments; this is how the film portrays the character's

personalities through irony to elicit laughter

Wordplay is commonly considered to be one of the primary techniques totrigger humor in comedies As a result, it is understandable as wordplay is thesecond most commonly used type of humor in the series Although the mostpopular type of wordplay is puns, the characters frequently use rhyming andneologism in their attempts to be humorous In particular, rhyming impresses andeasily piques the audience's humor as well as encourages dialogue creativity

The third position of teasing can be explained by the closeness of thecharacters’ relationships Because the main characters are close friends of eachother who frequently make fun of one another, it is understandable that thecharacters engage in teasing several times If the film deals with serious subjectsand the characters are portrayed as distant, there are no suitable circumstances touse teasing to arouse amusement

In contrast to irony, wordplay, and teasing, there are only a few jokes andsarcasm among the 119 humor in the selected episodes Jokes are sometimesused in this comedy to create amusing interactions between the characters.However, to achieve the best humorous effect, jokes cannot appear continuouslybecause they require specific contexts as well as fully built two parts: built-up

and punchline On the other hand, sarcasm, as opposed to teasing, is used to

mock the victim maliciously and metaphorically, so it can only be employed incertain scenes

3.2 Strategies that the fourth-year students of BE department at NEU apply

to translate those humorous elements into Vietnamese

3.2.1 Sarcasm

3.2.1.1 Sample 1: Wow You wrote another book? It's We got a Stephen Kingover here

Sample | is a sarcastic line in which the speaker compares his friend who

is interested in writing books about flirting tips to Stephen King Stephen King is

an American horror or fantasy writer who is well-known around the world,particularly for his motif of transforming ordinary stressful situations intoterrifying phenomena The saying is not meant to compare the listener's talent to

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that of a famous writer Instead, when it comes to Stephen King, the character

wants to discuss the story's horrific nature: flirting tip book, but in comparison to

horror stories The speaker's intent is to mock the target's book which writes

about horrible flirting tips

= A Literally translate

= B Replace the name “Stephen King” with the name of another famous writerfrom Vietnam

= C Replace the name “Stephen King” with general terms such as

“famous/popular writer/ author/ ”

= D Remove parts of the text I cannot

translate

Figure 2 HT choices of the fourth-year BE students for Sample 1

The pie chart illustrates the HT strategies that the final year students of BEdepartment at NEU choose when being asked to render sample 1 It can be seen

in the chart that answer B receives the most votes from students who take part in

the survey, while answer D has the fewest votes In addition, there is a

considerable number of students who choose answers A and C The quantitative

gap between the first three answers, in descending order of B(40%), A(30%), and

C(25%), 1s not significant Meanwhile, the final answer choices account for only

5% of the total, which is 5 to 8 times less than the remaining answers

Furthermore, none of the responses contributed any additional translation

strategies for sample 1

The suggested answers represent the four translation methods consideredfeasible by the study's author when translating a certain sample The name of the

translation method of option A is clearly shown in its content Option B is

"substitution" since the Vietnamese name replaced the English one based on the

common point of the two objects Option C is “explication” because the

mentioned writer's proper name is replaced by a more general noun phrase The

last option is a very brief definition of “omission.”

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Despite the popularity of Stephen King, not everyone in Vietnam is aware

of his fame or his horror works Therefore, it is understandable when the number

of students who chose options B, and C outnumber those who chose option D.Substitution and explication assists audiences who do not know Stephen Kingcan access more easily and understand the sentence's sarcastic purpose There is a15% difference between these two methods because using method C will affectthe match between the SL text and the TL text Literal translation occupies thesecond position because in terms of sentence structure or vocabulary, sample | iseasy to understand The remaining 5% select answer D, because they do notunderstand the sarcasm The participants hardly choose omission as thetranslation method for sample 1 because it may cause the sentence's meaning to

be lost

3.2.1.2 Sample 2: Dude, Ted was not missing out She's brainy and annoying,

kind of boring in the sack I guess she would've been perfect for Ted

In sample 2, the speaker satirizes the listener's personality by assigninghim to a girl with putatively similar characteristics The speaker mocks Ted's

personality which is boring and irritating, by describing the girl with negativetraits and claiming that they are a perfect couple

It is not surprising that all the participants decide to use the strategy ofliteral translation to render the given sample The humor is expressed in thecontent of sample 2 People can recognize the sarcasm even if they are unaware

of the context of the sentence Compared to sample 1, although both of them aresarcasm, they do not share the same HT techniques In sample 1, the content isalso relatively simple to understand, but there is a metaphorical element in the

sentence which is the personal name "Stephen King," raising concerns about the

effectiveness of the translation in the translated text

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3.2.2 Irony

3.2.2.1 Sample 3: Amateurs

= A Literally translate

= B Keep the text in English

= C Remove parts of the text I cannot translate

= D Other

It is obvious that the majority of the participants choose answer A to bethe most suitable HT method for sample 3, which accounts for 65% In contrast,

there are no students selecting answer C Answer B representing “loan”, is

considered to be the second most appropriate translation method, with 30%

choosing it, nearly half of whom chose answer A The remaining 5% suggest

their own translation choices for sample 3

Sample 3 includes only one word, so omission cannot be used to process

it If the translator uses omission for sample 3, it means that no subtitles are

created for this dialogue Audiences who do not know English may not

understand what the character says The five responses expressing their own

translation consists of “literally translate and add an explanation”, “Non tơ”,

“Change to A ma to”, “Con non lắm”, “Non và xanh lam” However, all five of

these answers are simply elaborate expressions for the literal translation method

As a result, it can be said that the number of people who choose answer A is

overwhelmingly 70% The distribution is explainable because the sample is quite

simple with a single word In addition, “Amateurs” is a loan word that is often

used in daily communication by Vietnamese people 30% of students who choose

option B probably believe the audiences can recognize the English word

“Amateurs” as “A ma to” in Vietnamese.

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3.2.2.2 Sample 4: "Do you guys know where the ladies' room is?

- No idea

- Haven't seen it."

Despite the difference in humor types, there is no concern about the

difficulty of conveying the ideas of the source language to the target language inboth samples 2 and 4 As a result, all the participants also choose literaltranslation method when translating sample 4 In contrast, although samples 3and 4 are both irony, sample 3 has more variety in the students’ choice oftranslation method The difference is caused by the versatility of the word

Although sample 3 is brief and simple, the word “amateurs” can be used as a

loan word in Vietnamese as well as translated in a variety of ways depending onthe individual's understanding of everyday language

3.2.3 Teasing

Sample 5: "I thought you were a complete idiot But a very cute idiot."

Sample 6: “I'm pregnant

- Are you sure you're not just getting fat?”

As section 3.1 has explained about teasing in the series “HIMYM”,teasing is used to show the closeness between the characters The material in asentence is often related to an everyday or previously mentioned topic Inaddition different from sarcasm and irony, the wording in teasing does not implythe opposite or difference, so reading the content is sufficient Therefore, it isunderstandable for all the students to choose literal translation for those samples

of teasing

3.2.4 Jokes

3.2.4.1 Sample 7: Don’t drink too much Or do

The sentence is said while the characters are at a party on a ship towelcome the new interns The speaker is giving safety instructions, indicating thelocation of the life preservers in case someone falls overboard To avoid creating

a tense atmosphere, the joke is provided not only as a safety precaution but also

as an encouragement for everyone to enjoy the party

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= A Remove parts of the text I cannot translate

= B Literally translate

= C Add materials in “Or do” into “Or drink much as you

can” then translate it

Besides the two answers A and B respectively representing omission and

literal translation, answer C describes how the translator applies the addition

method when rendering sample 7 According to the pie chart, most participantsprefer using addition strategy, taking up 55% of the figure The proportion of BEstudents choosing option A is 30%, which is the second highest number in thechart Without any other contributed ideas, the last position belongs to option Bwith only 15 students using literal translation to deal with the given sample

3.2.4.2 Sample 8: "Hold on You want me to help you trick my own son? I love

it.”

According to the statistic provided by the questionnaire, literal translation

is chosen by all the students to render sample 8 The uniform choice can beexplained by the simplicity of the wording as well as the absence of hiddenmeaning The difference in translation method between these two joke samples,

on the other hand, is due to grammatical differences between the SL and the TL

It is possible for translators to change the words in the original text beforeperforming the translation in order to translate a text with such a grammatical

gap

3.2.5 Wordplay

3.2.5.1 Sample 9: Oh, no, what a bummer! What craptastic luck! Without

Marvin's rhyme book, this ride's gonna suck!

Wordplay is a special type of humor that requires the translator to conveyboth the content and the humorous effect such as puns and rhyming Therefore,the author gave the participants two of four options, mentioning the humorous

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effect of translation Rhyming is the humorous effect used in sample 9 to explicit

humor for audiences The words “luck” and “suck” at the end of two consecutive

sentences create an interesting rhyme for the listeners

= A Keep the humorous effect (pun) withthe different

Figure 5 HT choices of the fourth-year BE students for sample 9

It can be seen from the pie chart that the number of students who believeoption A is their HT strategy to translate sample 9, accounts for 80% of the totalnumber, outnumbering other given options Option A represents the

“compensation” strategy, in which translators combine their sense of humor andlinguistic ability to translate the text in such a way that the comedy effect isretained However, in some cases, the expression cannot remain the same words

in the SL towards one in the TL The majority of participants choose thecompensation method for sample 9 because the main factor that arouses laughter1n this sample is rhyming They want to keep their translated text as close to theoriginal as possible while also conveying the original text's humor to theVietnamese audience

Option B, which is also the literal translation strategy, occupies the secondposition as being chosen by 15% of the total number of students taking part in thesurvey Processing documents containing wordplay is quite difficult for newtranslators who do not have as much experience as final-year students In thismethod, for wordplay, the translator focuses on translating the meanings ofwords in the text and adding explanatory notes on the rhyme of "luck" and

"suck" Therefore, literal translation assists students who are unprofessional intranslating render wordplay more easily without concern of losing humorouseffect

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Although both answers C and D represent the “omission” method, the

fundamental difference between them is the factor that each answer removes

from the translation process There is no vote for answer D because no one hasdifficulty understanding any clauses in the SL text The number of students

choosing answer C accounts for only 5% Similar to the group of students whochoose option B, they also had difficulty finding equivalent terms in the TL todescribe the wordplay in the SL

3.2.5.2 Sample 10: - Vow dare you?

- Just stop

- I can't It's invowluntary

To make fun of a friend's vow being despised by his wife, the speakerchanges the pronunciation of “how” to “vow” and “involuntary” to

“invowluntary” to suit the situation

= A Keep the humorous effect (pun) with the different

Different from sample 9, half of the 100 survey participants choose option

C as the translation method for sample 10 The remaining answers were dividedunequally into two answers A (15%) and B (35%) while no one chooses answer

D or contributes any other ideas Despite the fact that the last two samples are ofthe same type of humor, the selection trend of each sample differs due todifferences in wordplay usage Sample 10 is a challenging example of HT interms of wordplay because it is hard to find the equivalent terms for thosetransformed words During the translation process, if translators come acrosssome translated documents that do not have equivalent terms in the TL, such as

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sample 10, applying the omission method is perfectly acceptable In this case, thetext is translated without the humorous effect so it may not provoke laughter inthe audience

3.3 Factors influencing the HT choices of the fourth-year students of BEdepartment at NEU

Figure 7 Factors influencing the fourth-year students of BE department at

NEU to choose substitution.

This bar chart provides information about factors that make the studentschoose substitution method to translate sample 1 All 40 students agree that theirconcerns about the audience's perception of sarcasm in sample 1 and the form ofhumorous expression influence their decisions 29 out of 40 participants are

impressed by the speaker's use of words in sample 1 when mocking the target by

comparing his books to those of the well-known author Stephen King Nearlyhalf of the respondents claim that sample 1 is comprehensible

Despite being impressed by the comparison and clearly understanding thesarcasm, they still fear that some audiences who do not know Stephen Kingcannot understand the humor Because the humor is expressed in the content, it isimpossible to remove the following sentence To address their concerns, the

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students decided to change the name to someone familiar with Vietnam.Therefore, substitution is chosen by most of the students in sample 1

NEU to choose explication

All the students using explication to render sarcasm of sample | agree thatthe reason for their HT choice is motivated by a fear that the audience would beconfused while watching the comedy Moreover, 29 out of 30 responses, whichaccounts for about 96%, the humor in the content of the SL text impacts their HTchoices As a result, they decide to replace the proper name in the SL sentencewith a common phrase in the TL The transformation is more accessible because

the translators no longer have to concern about the audiences’ awareness of any

specific mentioned notable

The third factor which has 26 participants choose (about 86%) is the lack

of equivalent terms or expressions in the TL Different from students who usesubstitution strategy, they may not find out any character in Vietnam who is alsofamous for the horror genre Two-thirds of explication users believe that humor

in word choice influences their translation decisions

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3.3.3 Loan

For loan, the questionnaire obtained 30 answers choosing this translation

method for sample 3

F | fear that audiences cannot understand

NEU to choose loan

As shown in the chart, 60% of participants justify their HT choice bystating that they cannot find an equivalent in the TL to replace "Amateurs" 27out of 30 students claim that factor C in the questionnaire influences their HTdecision It is understandable because sample 3 consists of only one word All therespondents who apply loan to deal with this irony state that factors B and D put

an impact on how they render it As discussed in the previous section (3.2.3),amateur is a word that does not need to be translated, but audiences stillunderstand it because it is a borrowed word in Vietnamese that is commonly used

in everyday communication Meanwhile, a small number of participants mention

time limitation as one of their reasons because they remain the English word for

saving time purpose

3.3.4 Addition

The questionnaire receives 55 responses choosing addition strategy in the

HT process of sample 7

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F | fear that audiences cannot understand

NEU to choose addition

It can be seen that there are three factors that influence the students inchoosing addition technique The vote gap between the factors is not significant.Factor A ranks first among the three chosen with 53 responses due to the lack of

a word in the latter part of sample 7 49 out of 55 students indicate that the wordchoice in sample 7 is one of the influencing elements Despite the fact that factor

D is the least chosen, the number of students is still significant, with 43 students

It is not surprising when the respondents in this section mention factors C and Dbecause this joke was created by the contrast between the two sentences insample 7

3.3.5 Compensation

Compensation is commonly applied in wordplay situations, so the number

of its users also focuses on samples 9 and 10 Based on data collected from twowordplay templates, compensation was used by a total of 85 students

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Tiêu đề	A Study on Translation Strategies of Humor in Subtitling the series How I Met Your Mother
Tác giả	Nguyễn Thanh Tú
Người hướng dẫn	M.A. Le Thu Huong
Trường học	National Economics University
Chuyên ngành	Business English
Thể loại	Graduation Thesis
Năm xuất bản	2023
Thành phố	Hanoi

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Số trang	63
Dung lượng	13,6 MB