Research On Translating Culture-specific Items In Friends

In the era of globalization, along with the development of technology and the diversification of media, especially the popularity of DVD players and Internet, exotic audio-visual products enter into China at an unprecedented rate and become an important means for Chinese audiences’accessing to exotic cultures. Therefore, in today’s multi-cultural context, the transmission of cultural information in subtitle translation is of great importance for foreign audio-visual products’ entering into China. The researches on subtitle translation from the culture perspective are limited to the reflections of subtitlers’experiences, which need rigorous theoretical basis and empirical data support. Due to the gap of Culture-Specific Items studies in subtitle translation, this thesis makes an attempt to investigate the strategies in translating culture-specific items in American sitcom subtitles through a case study and theoretical analyses.Based on an analysis of studies on subtitle translation in our country, the author finds that although many scholars make studies in the filed of subtitle translation, most of their studies show great concern over the choosing of translation strategies:foreignization or domestication. This thesis also concludes that scholars who attach great importance to audiences’acceptability tend to choose domestication as the main translation strategy in subtitles, while scholars who lay great emphasis on the cultural exchange tend to select foreignization as the main translation strategy in subtitles. On the basis of the definition of culture-specific items give by Mona Baker, culture-specific items in Friends are generally classified into two aspects:1) proper nouns;2) idioms. Moreover, under the guidance of applicable translation approaches for culture-specific items in relevant studies by Chi (迟庆力,2007) in his doctoral dissertation, this thesis takes literal translation and annotation as applicable translation approaches for culture-specific items within the framework of foreignization and paraphrase, omission and substitution as applicable translation approaches for culture-specific items within the framework of domestication. On this basis, taking the relevant factors such as cultural considerations (cultural exchanges and audience’s acceptability) for translation strategies choosing and the compensation effects of information from pictures on the screen in subtitle translation into account, the author respectively analyzes above five translation approaches which are applicable to translations of culture-specific items in subtitles of Friends. In the meanwhile, concrete situations, under which these five translation approaches are applied, are also discussed in this thesis.On the basis of the case study in this thesis, adopting method of contradiction analysis, the author respectively analyzes the role each of them (foreignization and domestication) plays in subtitle translation. Further more, on the basis of conclusions drawn by the case study and some relevant viewpoints got from communication studies, from the following two aspects:1)cultural exchanges in the multicultural context;2) recipients’expectations for the otherness, this thesis makes appeals for highlighting the use of foreignization in translation of subtitles, especially culture-specific items.