Investigating the Translation of Humorous Expressions of the "General Manager" Television Series and its Persian Dubbing Based on Gottlieb's Strategies

Humor is one of the interesting aspects of language dealing with cultural, political, and social issues indirectly. Due to escaping criticism and filtering, humor is drawn on to establish a close relationship with the audience. With the advent of new communication tools, the translation of humorous expressions, especially in short and long films and series, began to take on new aspects. Accordingly, the present study aimed at evaluating the translator’s performance in translation of humorous expressions. To achieve this aim, in the research procedures, the data obtained from the Persian dubbing of the "general manager's" series (in Syrian accent) which was broadcasted from Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) were evaluated. In fact, 215 humorous expressions were extracted from the series and the frequency of using translation strategies proposed by Gottlieb (1992) was determined. The findings revealed that "paraphrasing" and "dislocation" were among the most frequently used strategies of the translator. Furthermore, cultural restrictions not only have led to the "condensation" of the expressions but also to omission of some sequences of the movie.