Exploring Humor Subtitling Strategies and Quality in Selected Episodes of the Sitcom Friends

This chapter explores humor types in the American sitcom Friends, the translation strategies mainly adopted and the quality of the translation. The main humor types were absurdity, surprise, ridicule, allusion, self-deprecation, and clumsiness. The strategies of transfer and paraphrase were frequently employed. Some nonverbal humor techniques were not rendered in subtitles. Most subtitles were of good quality, and a headnote was added as a creative strategy to make the humor understandable in translating “misunderstanding humor.” In translating culture-based “parody humor,” original cultural information was omitted, which caused semantic loss and a slightly comic effect. The punctuation marks were almost completely abandoned in all the instances, which may influence audiences' viewing experience. By following a systematic sitcom-specific “Type-Strategy-Assessment” framework, the study provides some recommendations for researchers, subtitlers, and translation teachers.