Treball de fi de grau en Traducció i Interpretació

In audiovisual translation there are many problems, as in general translation, but it becomes more difficult when humour or cultural references appear on screen, which the translator needs to make understandable for the target audience. The main goal of this bachelor thesis is to make a comparative analysis on how the colloquial language, humour and cultural references have been translated for the official dubbing into Spanish and German of the television series The Big Bang Theory. To do so, we have done a theoretical research regarding these issues and then, with this information, we have analysed ten fragments from the first three episodes of the third season of the series, which reflect problems of the mentioned three main topics. We have analysed which translation strategy was used for the examples and in some cases a suggestion for a new solution was given. We have seen that the most common used strategies for both languages were adaptation for the cultural references, and literal translation or recreation for humoristic examples, in some cases losing the sense of humour in the target solution. It has also become clear that, in general, the used language for the dubbing in both cases was unnatural and unidiomatic. This bachelor thesis describes how humour scenes can remain funny in dubbing using the right strategies, how cultural references are made understandable for the audience, and how the use of colloquial language could be improved.