Strategies of Translating Humor: A Comparative Subtitling Study

In the field of translation, and specifically in audiovisual translation (AVT), humor poses as a translation problem. It remains a phenomenon that is yet to be fully comprehended. Another phenomenon that is limited in research is fansubbing. Fansubbers employ different strategies than professional subtitlers when attempting to overcome humor translation problems. Professional subtitlers and fansubbers must overcome linguistic, cultural and technical issues in the process of translation. However, their translations are different from each other. This thesis aims to identify the strategies professional subtitlers and fansubbers employ when faced with humor in translation in the context of Arabic and English. By identifying the strategies that professional subtitlers and fansubbers used in transferring humor, several similarities and differences are highlighted. To do so, the first two seasons of the comedy sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013-2021) are used as a case study to compare professional subtitling and fansubbing. Given that professional subtitlers and fansubbers occupy different domains, two websites are used to accommodate that: Netflix provided professional subtitles and EgyBest provided a fansubbed version of the show. As humor is crucial to the show, the ability to transfer the humorous message is crucial to its target audience. Therefore, any intended humor that is verbal must be transferred. The main aim of this thesis is to identify the main difficulties faced by subtitlers when translating humor from English to Arabic. Another aim is to identify the techniques and strategies adopted by the subtitlers in professional subtitling website Netflix and the fansubbing website of EgyBest to resolve subtitling problems related to humor. It was found that semantic misrepresentation and explanatory notes are the most frequently used strategies in rendering humor to the target language. Further, the main difficulties faced by the fansubbers was sexual language whereas cultural language was the main difficulty for professional subtitlers.