The translation of English idioms from Friends

Abtract

An idiom can be defined as a group of words with a meaning different from the combined meanings of its component words. The words in idioms cannot be depleted or replaced by synonymous words, or put in a different order, without affecting or destroying the meaning. Idioms prevail in both Chinese and western culture, from ancient to modern times. Idioms are so vivid, terse, colloquial and forcible in conveying a particular meaning that speakers of both languages frequently use them. If one does not know the culture background,one may misunderstand some idioms. So knowing the culture background is good for us in understanding or interpreting the English idioms.

 

This paper is a study of the translation of the American sitcom Friends.For centuries, translation theory and practice cannot get rid of the dominant idea of “faithfulness” or “equivalence”. The translator has always been wandering about the dilemma between metaphrase and free translation and tried in vain to meet both sides. Skopostheory, born in the mid-to- late 1970s, a theoretical revolution in contemporary translation studies, regards translation action as a purposeful intercultural action. The Skopostheory states that translation actions all have specific purposes, which determinethe whole process of translation.

 

 

Keywords:English idioms,Friends

 

 

1. Introduction

An idiom can be defined as a group of words with a meaning different from the combined meanings of its component words. The words in idioms cannot be depleted or replaced by synonymous words, or put in a different order, without affecting or destroying the meaning. Idioms prevail in both Chinese and western culture, from ancient to modern times. Idioms are so vivid, terse, colloquial and forcible in conveying a particular meaning that speakers of both languages frequently use them. If one does not know the culture background,one may misunderstand some idioms. So knowing the culture background is good for us in understanding or interpreting the English idioms.

 

Idioms contain much other cultural information, such as the history, geography, religion, mode of thinking and so on. Idioms have rich cultural connotation and philosophy. English idiom is the crystallization of wisdom in the film and television works. It is concentrated reflection of special ingredient in the language, English national characteristics and many rhetorical ways. Exploring its origins not only helps us to better understand the movie content, but also can deepen understanding of the culture of English-speaking countries.

 

English teleplay and film is a kind of attractive artistic form. It adopts a lot of art essence, such as literature, music, drama and so on, also relates to the eternal theme of humanity like culture, religion and love. There is natural environment of language communication in the English teleplay. Coupled with the characters' facial expressions, gestures and posture, they reflect the language infectivity to the maximumand make the language vivid. The classic movie and teleplay language havedistinct linguistic characteristics: simple, concise, strong rhythm sense, characterization of finger and language, humorous and lively. This includes making use of many idioms. Even a classic sentence which is in the teleplay is widely read by the public and becomes an idiom. Idioms are the result of long-term use of language, extracted from the language of the phrase or clause and the essence of the language. Understanding idioms in the English movie and teleplay will not only help people better appreciate the movie, but also help English language learning.

The general principle of sitcom, just as the word comedy indicates, is to elicit laughter from its audience. It is easy to find that basically there would come a “butt” every 28 seconds in the 20 minutes long episode. Apart from such amusing factors as the exaggerated facial expressions of actors and actress or special musical effect, its humor devices mainly from the smart and funny dialogues in a particular situation. And in order to increase the comic effect, the broadcasting of each story is also accompanied by real or recorded sound of laughter / canned laughter as background sound. Like in Friends, 55 people were paid to come to the studio and watch the first four episodes were filmed in front of a studio audience. Unlike films that usually choose influential historic or social topics as their theme or background, sitcom mainly concerns hot issues of the pub lic’s interests in the society. Take Friends an example, the sitcom reveal after-college life of six characters, the love and intimate relationship among them through minor aspects of everyday life, including enjoying coffee at Central Perk, sharing their love stories with each other, helping others out when one of them is in trouble. It involves lesbian issues, unemployment, to name just a few.

 

 

This paper is a study of the translation of the American sitcom Friends.For centuries, translation theory and practice cannot get rid of the dominant idea of “faithfulness” or “equivalence”. The translator has always been wandering about the dilemma between metaphrase and free translation and tried in vain to meet both sides. Skopostheory, born in the mid-to- late 1970s, a theoretical revolution in contemporary translation studies, regards translation action as a purposeful intercultural action. The Skopostheory states that translation actions all have specific purposes, which determinethe whole process of translation.

 

2. Literature Review

Liguistics was the dominant humanistic discipline of the 1950s and 1960s. This undeniable fact certainly had an impact on the study of translation of that time. Most translation theories before 1970s were constructed on the basis of linguistics and equivalence. Ever since 1970s more scholars have moved their scope. The western translation studies beyond linguistics and widened their scope. The western translation theories begin to challenge and expand the notion of equivalence and look for another way to develop translation studies. Skopostheory, the kernel of German school of functionalist translation theory, was not introduced until 1970s, which has presented us a brand-new approach to translation. It essentially tends to view translation as an intentional, interpersonal, partly verbal intercultural interaction based on a source-text. In the following sections we will look at the development of idioms and its main aspects.  

These linguistic approaches basically conceive translating as a code-switching operation. Though the unit of translation has been shifted from the word or phrase to the text since the beginning of the 1970s, linguistic approach as a fundamental trend is not broken. Equivalence is still regarded as a basis concept or even constituent of translation. Because translating is not merely and not even primarily process, and furthermore, linguistics has not yet formulated the right questions to tackle our problem, Vermeer states that linguistic alone would not help us (Vemeer 2000: )As a break with linguistic translation theory, Skopostheory is one part of the school of function-oriented approach to the theory and practice of translation grown in Germany in 1970s. It reflects a general shift from predominantly linguistic and rather formal translation theory to a more skopos and socio-culture oriental concept of translation. The so-called “German School” of functionalist translation theory has four important contributors as its founders: Katharina Reiss, Hans J Vermeer, Justa Holz-Manttari and lately Christine Nord.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. The Related Researches

 

A sitcom or situation comedy, originally devised for radio but today typically found on television, is a special genre of comedy performance. It usually consists of recurring characters in a format in which there is one or more humorous story lines centered on a common environment, such as a family home or workplace. A sitcom has its distinctive features as follows. First, generally speaking, sitcom is more liable to reproduce the ordinary people’s daily life, in particular, their families and working 27 conditions.

The writer usually infuses household affairs with the true essence of life that people find behind their laughter. Though both TV series and sitcoms are about the real life, sitcom has the special flare of observing the world from a different point of view. Second, a sitcom is made at low cost for quick return. Firstly, script writing is short in that each part of sitcom only lasts a little more than 10 minutes with relatively simple plot and stable basic relationship of characters. Secondly, sitcom is mostly filmed inside like drama indoors. The places where the actors perform are stable, mainly staying indoors with fewer scenes outdoors. Consequently, the shooting of sitcom is quicker than other sorts of TV series.

 

Lastly, it entails relatively less effort for the later refinement in that the scenes have been shifted in the process of shooting. The little work left to be done is to attach the title and ending to the main body of the sitcom The basic unit of sitcom is episode that usually lasts for about 20 minutes. Each episode consists of several acts that happen in certain places like dining room or living room where characters gather sharing their stories and discussing certain topics, in Friends, for instance, the main six characters usually appear in Monica’s apartment or on the sofa of Central Park. W hat distinguished it from other TV series that have a through storyline is that it has a relatively independent topic in each episode from others. It is also highly predictable in that the story at the beginning usually is repeated at the end of the episode.

 

Friends was a long-running American television sitcom centered on the lives of a group of six twenty-somethings (eventually thirty-something) consisting of three men and three women living in New York City. The alternate titles were “Six of One”, “Across The Hall”, “Insomnia Cafe” and “Friends Like Us”. In the US, its first episode was aired on September 22, 1994, the last on May 6, 2004, each season composed of 24 20-minutes’ episodes. This sitcom has lasted ten years which undoubtedly proof of its popularity. The most obvious target audience is those that can identity with the group of young, attractive, single New Yorkers, either because they share, or aspire to, those characteristics, which the audience figures probably bear out. The heat of Friends has also been spreading into China. Now it is available on VCD and DVD and the mainstream buyers are college students and young white-collar workers, particularly those working in foreign ventures, most of who revel in improving their English.

Take 《Friends》for example，let us analy the sentence of Friends.