On The Choices Of Translation Strategies Of Domestication And Foreignization From The Perspective Of Memetics

Economic globalization, developed information and convenient transportation havepromoted the integration of various countries and peoples of the world. Being exposed todifferent cultures, people nowadays can get to know the world through various channels. Friendsis an American classic teleplay, which tells stories about American daily life and reflectsAmerican culture and customs in all aspects, so it is the best material for Chinese audience to getto know America and western countries. There are abundant western cultures in Friends, some ofwhich are totally strange to Chinese audience, while some of which are very familiar to them.Memetics is a theory used to expound cultural transmission. Memetics experts argue that culturaltransmission possesses diachronic feature, and that it can be divided into three phases, namely,initial phase, mid-phase and final phase. Taking those specific western cultures embodied inFriends for examples, the transmission of such cultures in China will go through three phases:initial phase, mid-phase and final phase. For the western cultures that are in the initial phase ofthe transmission in China, Chinese audience is till totally strange with them; for those that are inthe mid-phase of the transmission in China, Chinese audience has had some knowledge aboutthem; while for those that are in the final phase of the transmission in China, Chinese audience isvery familiar with them. The author suggests that according to different phases of culturaltransmission, the translator can adopt corresponding translation strategies to translate these exoticcultures in Friends. For the western cultures that are strange to Chinese audience, the translatorcan move towards the target reader, adopting the translation strategy of domestication. For somewestern cultures that Chinese audience knows something about, the translator can consider boththe target reader and the source writer, making a compromise between domestication andforeignization. While for those western cultures that are familiar to Chinese audience, thetranslator can move towards the source writer, adopting the translation strategy of foreignization.Under the guidance of qualitative approach, this thesis takes numerous cultural translationsfrom Friends proposed by SCG subtitle and YYets subtitle as examples, based on the theory ofmemetics. According to diachronic feature and different phases of cultural transmission as wellas the main strategies of cultural translation, domestication and foreignization, the thesis mainlyconcerns the choices of these two strategies when doing cultural translation at different phases ofcultural transmission, thus providing new reference for cultural translation.