On CCTV Program Title Translation From The Perspective Of Memetics

Recent years have witnessed the importance and prevalence of TVprograms, which are powerful methods of cultural transmission. CCTV, asChinese national TV station, shoulders the responsibility of transmittingChinese culture to foreign countries. In order to make CCTV programspopular, a good English program title is a necessity for English is the mostwidely used language. Hence the translation of CCTV program titles intoEnglish becomes an urgent task. The translating of TV program titles is notonly the act of converting one language into another, but also a powerfultool to attract foreign audience, to promote the program and to transmitnational culture.Memetics has been a heated theory both at home and abroad since itwas born. The core concept of memetics is meme, a unit of culturalimitation. The process of meme replication includes assimilation, retention,expression and transmission. Memes that can be successfully transmittedare called strong memes, whose features are copying-fidelity, fecundity andlongevity. Most memes are expressed in language. Translation is animportant way of language meme transmission from one country toanother.As an academic research on CCTV program title translation, thisthesis discusses both internal and external factors that influence CCTVprogram title translation from the perspective of memetics. On one hand,linguistic features of both Chinese and English TV program titles as internal factors are analyzed. On the other hand, cognitive perspective,affect and cultural environment as external factors are discussed whencomparison and contrast are made between Chinese and English TVprogram title memes. Moreover, CCTV program title memes are dividedinto four categories to help the meme replication among foreign audience.Since TV program titles are memes containing rich cultural information,domestication and foreignization, as general strategies for culturaltranslation, are put forward. Analogy and repetition are two basictranslation strategies from the perspective of memetics. As fordomestication, analogy is adopted and the specific methods are directquotation, homophony method, identical language set pattern andassociative meaning method. As for foreignization, repetition is adoptedand the most frequently-used method is transliteration.