论文总字数：49444字

摘 要

俚语以幽默诙谐、生动简练的特点成为英语中最活跃，最具表现力和感染力的一种语言形式，很多的俚语被用于影视作品、学作品和报刊杂志中。随着中外文化交流的不断深入，人们开始逐渐接受西方文化，也爱上了情景喜剧这种幽默、轻松的喜剧形式。大批优秀的情景喜剧通过互联网传入中国，对于字幕翻译的需求也与日俱增。

为了更好地提高英文字幕的翻译质量,作者以《摩登家庭》为具体案例,奈达功能对等理论为依据,对美国情景喜剧字幕组的俚语的汉译方法进行了分析，归纳出字幕组翻译主要采用了两种方法，即直译和意译。其中，对俚语中的粗俗语、多义词和双关语，字幕组更倾向于使用意译的方法。并且分析了采取每种方法的原因及其所实现的翻译功能，证明了运用功能对等理论研究字幕组美剧翻译的适用性。

然而,因为受到时间、文化背景知识和学术能力的限制,笔者无法充分收集 《摩登家庭》中所有俚语汉译的例子,并加以分析说明。但是笔者希望通过这篇文章能引起翻译工作者对俚语翻译的重视,尤其是重视对奈达功能对等理论引入俚语翻译的指导意义。

关键词：俚语汉译 《摩登家庭》 奈达功能对等理论

1. Introduction

• 1. Need for the study

With the integration of global economy, numerous foreign films and TV products have flooded into the Chinese market in recent years. As a main form of mass communication, foreign films and TV series provide the audiences best opportunity to engage in foreign cultures, life styles, traditions, customs and ideologies, which can not only entertain and relax audiences, but also enrich their knowledge of the world. Among them, American sitcoms, from Friends in the previous decade to today’s Two Broke Girls, The Big Bang Theory and Modern Family, they have been popular among Chinese people. Although, it is more and more convenient to get access to these programs, language becomes a big problem to many audiences. Most audiences can only watch the translated versions because of language barrier. Thus in order to help Chinese audiences to understand and enjoy those TV products maximally as the foreign audiences do, translators try their best to reproduce the meaning of the target language. That is to say, translators should do whatever they could to reproduce the original meaning of those subtitles correctly and help Chinese audience to appreciate those foreign films or series better.

When they are watching American films or TV series without Chinese translation, most Chinese EFL learners cannot fully understand the films since there are many slang words and terms. If the audiences do not understand the slangs, they will get lost in understanding the whole plot.

American slang, the colorful, irreverent, sometimes offensive language of informal speech, is an integral part of everyday life, and is a complicated language phenomenon. In the past, slang was considered to be a coarse or vulgar language. Most slang vocabulary came from jargon, cant or argot. And they were used by the underworld groups, for example, criminals, beggars or other under-class people. But slangs can only develop in the colloquial way. Today, slangs can be found at all parts of the society, business world, sports, or other entertainment industry. So the non-conventionality of slang makes a distinction in language style and register between slang and the standard language.

As Nida (1993) mentioned in his book Language Culture and Translating: “Translation means communicating and this process depends on what is received by person hearing or reading a translation”. Judging the validity of a translation cannot stop with a comparison of corresponding lexical meanings, grammatical classes, and rhetorical devices. What is important is the extent to which receptors correctly understand and appreciate the translated text. The purpose of translation is to enhance cultural communication among different nations. As for people, the most direct and efficient way to understand a foreign culture is watching audio-visual products importing from other countries. Among various TV products, American TV series, the famous American sitcom Modern Family has provided Chinese people with a chance to know more about American culture and to perfect their English by imitating its dialogues. But the biggest characteristic of this sitcom is its humorous language. In order to reach the goal of entertaining people, a lot of puns and slang words are used in the sitcom. And it is well known that slang words, deeply rooted in culture, are very flexible cultural elements. The slang words make the subtitle translation a big challenge with great difficulties.

1.2 Research purpose

Modern Family is a typical American sitcom with lots of colloquial words. This paper, by analyzing different groups of slang words spoken by different characters in the sitcom, tries to analyze the methods that translators use in the sitcom. Meanwhile it tries to prove that Nida’s functional equivalence is relatively reasonable used in handling with slang words translation.

In China, an increasing number of scholars began to realize the importance of studying and learning American slangs. The lines in Modern Family will be taken into discussion in this paper. The study of American slangs continues in the hope of helping us to achieve a better understanding of English and American culture, raising our culture awareness communication competence in international activities with foreign countries.

2. Literature Review

For traditional literary works, audience or readers can go back to the lines or words which puzzle them. As for films or TV series, actors’ words are written in water. However, it is quite necessary for translators to pay more attention to the script translation. Before we talk about the principles and strategies for slang translation, we take a look at the existing researches on slang.

2.1 Slang

2.1.1 Definition

From about 1850, slang has become the accepted term for “illegitimate, colloquial speech”. But even after 1850, slang was not accepted with general good grace, for in 1873, Hotten was heard protesting the restriction of the term to “those lowest words only which are used by the dangerous classes and the lowest grades of the society.” This negative attitude has been prevalent till the end of the 19^th century. However, some people, meanwhile, begin to notice the positive side of slang, and set to raise their voice to speak for slang. Among these pioneers, M. G. k. Chesterton, a British detective story writer, was worthy of noticing. “All slang is metaphor and all metaphor is poetry” (Hesaidin1901). These two opposite attitudes coexisted for decades till the early years of the 20^th century.

With the development of the society, people tend to view the world in a more objective and scientific way. So is their attitude towards slang. J. Brander Mathews, a British lexicographer, said in 1893 through The Atlantic Monthly:

good slang…is that it has a real meaning. Bad slang has no meaning; it is simply a succession of sounds which, because they come trippingly from the tongue, impose upon the ignorant imagination of the reader…Good slang is idiomatically expressive and has a narrow escape sometimes from being poetical. (Hotten, 1972)

In The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang, slang is defined as following:

Language in common colloquial use but considered to be outside standard educated speech and consisting either of new words or phrases or of current words used in new sense. (1992)

According to Longman Contemporary English-Chinese Dictionary (2000), slang is a language that is not usually acceptable in serious speech or writing, including words, expressions, etc., regarded as very informal or not polite, and those used among particular groups of people. Or sometimes in British English, slang is informal to attack with rude angry words.

In Oxford Advanced Learner's English-Chinese Dictionary (Six edition) (2007), slang refers to some very informal words and expressions that are more common in spoken language, especially used by a particular group of people, for example, children, criminals, soldiers, etc.

This definition denotes the overall evolution of slang’s connotation in different stages and points out the characteristics, formation and even the motive of slang. Thus it can be accepted by us as the most objective and comprehensive definition.

2.1.2 Features

According to Erie Partridge (1959:19), four characteristics present in all slang, whatever the period and whatever the country, are: novelty; volatility and light-headedness as well as light-heartedness; ephemerally; the sway of fashion. While some of the attributes of slang noticed by Connie Eble (1996:12) are: ephemerality; innovation; and the group-identifying function.

A. Humor and Novelty

People create slang terms for the sense of novelty and the expression of new ideas and new things. It is accepted by both upper-class and lower-class, and especially the college students who tend to use up-to-date words that form a kind of characteristic style of them. Most slang terms are of novel conception, producing humor and witty effects. For example, being popular in recent years, "go bananas" means become crazy or angry. The original meaning of "banana" has nothing to do with going crazy or angry, but the pronunciation of it is quite particular. The repetition of similar phonemes alternate in the pronunciation, which has a very nice rhythm and a vivid effect. In addition to, there is no compounding vowel or consonant clusters in the pronunciation, which sounds short, hurry or crazy. H. L. Mencken(l936:55) indicates that American slangs shows its character in a constant experimentation, a great interest in novelty, a steady reaching out for creative, vivid and humorous forms.

B. Conciseness

Conciseness may not be the soul of American slangs, but it is the main features of slang, suggested by Flexer in his I hear Americans Talking: An Illustrated Treasury of American Words and Phrases. Slang is brief and easy to speak out. One slang term can easily express the meaning which cannot be done by a standard usage. For instance, cop (policeman), cab (taxi), touchy (difficult to handle, requiring careful tact), fad (a craze), fire (terminate the employment of) and so on.

C. Ephemerality

According to Grose (1785), most slang is ephemeral. We need his translations for many of the longer idioms and phrases. As it is known that slang spreads very fast, and it is unstable and temporary. Eric Partridge once suggested, “Its ephemerality is more important, for almost everyone has noticed that, of the numerous slang words taken up by the masses and the classes, most have only a short life, and that, when they die, unhonoured and unsung, they are almost immediately replaced by novelties equally transitory [...]”.

D. Common Colloquialism

In terms of those definitions, slang is considered highly colloquial language. Slang mostly comes from common people; it is used by common people in their conversations. Highly colloquial is the soul of slang. Like colloquialisms and idioms, slang is used in informal conversation or informal essays. The usage of slang not only conveys the suggestion that the speaker and the listener enjoy a friendship, but also expressed the infirmity and familiarity of a general social situation.

2.2 Previous studies on the Chinese translation of slang in American teleplays

According to these features and functions of slang, translation methods are applied accordingly: transliteration, literal translation, free translation, annotation, substitution, paraphrasing, back translation and etc. (Wang Niuniu: 2010).

Yu Zhengjing amp; Wei Quanfeng (2006) and later on Yu Zhengjing (2007) put forward the equivalence principle for slang translation, namely semantic, stylistic and cultural equivalence. For semantic equivalence, Yu (2007) argues that the choice of words in slang for the two languages differ on most occasions. Thus a translator should analyze the occasion as well as situation of the use of slang, consider the context and then give a correct judgment of its meaning. For stylistic equivalence, she insists on retaining the slang features of being humorous, genial and colloquial. And last, for cultural equivalence, she admits that it is hard to achieve this goal due to the huge differences in different nations like living habits, religion and values.

There are researches on the Chinese translation of slangs in American teleplays. In China, some famous translators like Professor Xia Ping, Qian Shaochang, Zhang Chunbai, have successfully done a lot of translation work for English movies and TV series like Growing Pains, The Colbys, Hotel, Love at First Sight, etc. In addition to the researches by famous scholars, there are more and more researches done by other researchers. They have brought various theories into slang translation, including Nida’s functional equivalence theory and skopos theory to guide slang translation. Gao Yuan (2014) have applied Nida’s functional equivalence theory to slang translation in the big bang theory. She analyzes the Chinese translating version of slang words in it. After a relatively detailed research, the author classifies some typical examples in this sitcom, and analyzes the Chinese translation of those slang words. As a result, the author finds that slang words update very fast and have various forms, as a result, translators should try to jump out of the box and deal with this problem from a new angle. Wang fangxin (2013) translated slang words in teleplay-desperate housewives from the perspective of skopos theory. The findings of her thesis are as follows: Firstly, in order to meet the expectations of the majority of audiences, the slang words are always translated into fashionable Chinese expressions. Secondly, in the slang translation, domestication strategy is mainly applied so as to make the subtitles easy, vivid and interesting.

Generally speaking, researches of previous scholars have studied American slang from various aspects and have laid high and solid foundation studies on American slangs. This thesis dwells on the study of slang translation in the teleplay, which makes an analysis on American slang in the lines of Modern Family with the guidance of Nida’s functional equivalence theory.

1. Functional Equivalence

Eugene A. Nida is well-known as a translation theorist as well as a linguist. His translation theory is comparatively newly-imported in China as a foreign theory. As a result, he can be regarded as a productive writer in translation field.

3.1 Definition of functional equivalence

Nida has pointed out two definitions of functional equivalence: the maximal and minimal definition. “A maximal, ideal definition of functional equivalence could be stated as: the readers of a translated text should be able to understand and appreciate it in essentially the same manner as the original readers did.” “A minimal, realistic definition of functional equivalence could be stated as: the readers of a translated text should be able to comprehend it to the point that they can conceive of how the original readers of the text must have understood and appreciated it.” (Nida, 1986:118)

3.2 Principles of functional equivalence

In deciding what should be done to produce the closest natural equivalence, Nida (1993: 92-94) in his book Language and Culture: Contexts in Translating, Nida provides six principles.

(1) If a close, formal translation is likely to result in a misunderstanding of the designative meaning, certain changes must be introduced into the text of the translation or the literal translation may be retained and a footnote explaining the likely misunderstanding must be added.

(2) If a close, formal translation makes no sense, i.e. is totally obscure in designative meaning, certain changes may be introduced into the text unless the source text is purposely obscure, in which case the obscurity may be retained and a footnote explaining the nature of the obscurity may be very useful and in most instances fully justified.

(3) If a close, formal translation is so semantically and syntactically difficult that the average person for whom the translation is being made is very likely to give up trying to understand it, certain changes are warranted, although it may be useful to indicate the nature of such changes in an introduction or in footnotes.

(4) If a close, formal translation is likely to result in serious misunderstanding of the associative meanings of the source text or in a significant loss in a proper appreciation for the stylistic values of the source text, it is important to make such adjustments as are necessary to reflect the associative values of the source text.

(5) The manner in which a translation is to be used has a significant influence upon the extent to which adjustments are to be made.

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