When American Humor Meets Chinese Expression: A Study on Humor Equivalence in Subtitle Translation of Young Sheldon—A Multidimensional Corpus-Based Comparative

Abstract

This study investigates the equivalent transmission of American humor in Chinese subtitles through the analysis of Young Sheldon. By constructing a three-dimensional "language-culture-science" corpus (120,000 bilingual parallel texts) and integrating dynamic equivalence theory with pragmatics, the research reveals: Scientific humor retained only 54.3% of its laughability (LRR), but "terminology simplification + affective anchoring" strategies improved this to 89%. Cultural default humor increased its Comedy Acceptance Index (CAI) from 3.1 to 4.3 (5-point scale) using a gradient compensation model. Subtitle spatiotemporal constraints led to a negative correlation between information density and humor effectiveness (r = -0.72, p < 0.01). A "cognitive adaptation" decision tree model is proposed to optimize cross-cultural humor translation.