A Study On American Slang Translation From The Perspective Of Translation Memetics

Slang is an informal register different from the standard language.Due to the informality of slang and the vulgarity of some slang expressions,many scholars believe that slang is a form of language that has a low status,which has led to the tepid research of slang at home and abroad.However,as the whole world has paid more and more attention to the voice of minorities in recent years,American slang,representing subcultural groups,has gradually come to the fore.It can be said that slang is already a part of modern American social life.Slang is not only a kind of presentation of language,but also a social psychological and cultural phenomenon,and this phenomenon cannot be expressed through verbatim translation,so the translation of slang has always brought many problems to translators.As globalization promotes more frequent communication between China and the United States,whether American slang can be translated accurately and effectively means whether the two peoples can communicate more fluently and successfully.Therefore,the study of American slang translation is a constructive and meaningful subject from the perspective of cultural and people-to-people exchanges.Translation Memetics proposed by Chesterman is a translation theory based on Dawkins’ Memetics.In response to the idea that theories are useless in the translation academia,Chesterman collectively regards the widely spread translation theories and concepts that influence translators’ thinking and action as translation memes,in order to explain the relationship between translation theory and translation practice and emphasize the guiding role of theory on practice.The core concepts of Translation Memetics are norm memes,strategy memes and value memes,which are all independent of each other and also interrelated.Norm memes provide guidelines for translators’ behavior,strategy memes are widely used by translators as translation tools while value memes are those factors concerning translator’s ethics and value judgment that have an influence on translators’ personal decisions and ultimately on intercultural communications.This research organically combines Translation Memetics and American slang translation.Taking the E-C translation of the dialogue of the famous American Sitcom Friends(Season One)as an example,using the slang words and expression that appeared in the first season as the source of the corpus,it analyzes the relationship between slang and memes as well as the definition of slang memes,then explores how to spread slang memes through translation,based on which,the research investigates how norm memes and value memes in Translation Memetics affect the translation and transmission of American slang.Finally,inspired by the two memes,the translation strategies comprised in strategy memes are used to carry out specific analysis on the translation of American slang.In the course of research,the author uses such research methods as documentary study,classification and analysis,and text comparison comprehensively,and summarizes the different strategies that can be used when translating American slang based on Chesterman’s three core translation memes,here are some research findings:Firstly,as a special language form,slang is also undergoing constant imitation,copying and dissemination,and according to its intensity of dissemination,it can be divided into strong and weak slang memes.Based on the way slang memes are copied and spread,they can then be divided into genotypic,phenotypic and variant ones.Secondly,according to expectancy norms in the system of norm memes,slang translation should be an overt translation in principle,but the actual operation still depends on the nature of the slang itself.The accountability norm,the communication norm and the relation norm,which are all included in professional norms under the system of norm memes,also shed light on skills,information transmission and priority issues in slang translation.Thirdly,the four value memes,namely,clarity,truth,trust and understanding,which involve translation ethics and value judgment of the translator,effectively solve such problems as ambiguity,form correspondence,lack of information and misunderstanding in slang translation,so as to improve the accuracy of translation.Fourthly,As widely used and recognized as standard conceptual tools of translation,syntactic,semantic and pragmatic strategy memes have practical guiding significance for slang translation: literal translation,transposition and scheme change are more suitable for slang translation in terms of syntax;distribution change,paraphrase and trope change are better slang translation strategies in terms of semantics;and culture filtering,explicitness change and visibility change are the best strategies for slang translation in terms of pragmatics.