English to Chinese fansub translation of humour in The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel

Abstract

Humour is bounded by culture or language, and it involves shared knowledge and history between the sender and the receiver, which could make humour subtitling even more complicated. This study aimed at exploring the subtitling strategies used in fansub in the television series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, as well as the humour elements of source and target text in each humour, and the translation errors made in English to Chinese fansub. Humour instances were identified and analysed, and the subtitling strategies used by fans were explained. The findings showed the inconsistent quality of fansub could be due to linguistic and technical constraints, insufficient cultural knowledge of the source and target cultures, and deviations from translation norms, resulting in linguistic, pragmatic, cultural and text-specific translation errors. The study could have some theoretical and practical implications for translators, subtitlers, and trainers.