Research On Movie Subtitles Translation From Memetics Perspective

Translation is not a process of pure linguistic transformation but aninteractive activity of cultural transmission; the same goes to thetranslation of movie subtitles which is dependent upon the characteristicsof movie subtitles. Different from other stylistic literature works, moviesubtitles are characterized by comprehensiveness, instantaneity,popularity, and no annotation; These require translators to selectappropriate methods for the translation of movie subtitles in accordancewith practical situation. Since movies functions as a media for culturalcommunication, translators shall represent as much as possible thecultural connotations that underlie in movie subtitles during translating,which requires the translators be familiar with the characteristics ofmovie-subtitles translation as well as the cultural connotation that thesubtitles contain.Memetics as proposed by Dawkins in1976and translation memeticsas proposed by Chesterman in1996offer researchers a new horizon forthe study of subtitles translation. Meme, which is the basic unit of culture, relied on both “replication” and “transmission”. From theperspective of memetics, translating could be seen as the process duringwhich memes are replicated and transmitted through the media oflanguage. In this process, translators, as the host of memes, are expectedto perform two major tasks: decoding and transmitting the source memes.According to translation memetics,“decoding” and “infecting” are twoimportant processes to translators (hosts) for the transmission of memes.In case that translators are unfamiliar with SL as well as its connotation(source memes), they fail to decode the source language as is expected.Similarly, if translators are unaware of target readers as well astarget-reader memes, they fail to attract the audiences’ attention towhat they translated, will also lead to the same failure for readers oraudiences would not accept the translation, hence failing to “infect” theaudiences (the new hosts), and resulting in the abstraction of memesduring its transmission.According to Professor He Ziran, language memes can betransmitted and replicated in the form of genotype and phenotype. The two forms of memes transmission and replication also apply totranslation. Taken several recently-produced movies as research subjects,and memetics as theoretical framework, this thesis intends to make ananalysis on how the translated subtitles could “infect” their potentialaudiences under such pressures as from publishers and audiences’demands through the translators efforts in “decoding”, for sustainableand effective trans-cultural communication in a way as expected.