Research On Subtitle Translation Of Desperate Housewives From The Perspective Of Memetics

With economic globalization in the modern society, the cultural exchanges amongdifferent countries are more and more frequent than ever before. English movies andTV series become more and more popular among Chinese youngsters. Especially forEnglish learners, this is an important channel to learn native English and know aboutwestern culture. But due to their limited English ability, watching movies and TVseries should have the aid of subtitles. As a special mode of translation, due to itsutility, although subtitle translation has aroused more and more attention amongtranslation learners, the subtitle translation research is limited in depth and breadtheven without the guidance of a complete theory system. In order to make for thedeficiency, this thesis takes “Research on Subtitle Translation of DesperateHousewives from the Perspective of Memetics” as the title to discuss subtitletranslation. With Desperate Housewives as case study based on Chesterman’smemetic translation theory this thesis analyzes subtitle translation from theperspective of memetics aimed at providing some enlightenment to subtitle translatorsthrough research findings.Memetics is a brand-new theory in linguistics and translation nowadays.Memetics is generated based on Darwin’s Evolution theory and is the evolution theoryin cultural field. Memes replicate and transmit by imitation. Chesterman introducedmemetics to translation research and came up with memetic translation theory. Hemaintained that the evolution of translation theory is the result of continuousreplication and transmission of translation memes. Translation is the process ofmemes transmitting from one country to another and from one culture to another.The research questions of this thesis are how to analyze the relationship betweenmemetic theory and translation, how to research the subtitle translation under thememtic translation theory and summarize translation strategies to provide help forsubtitle translators. This thesis uses documentary collection and analysis, descriptive and explanatory method and case study as research methodology, first introduces thefeatures and current research situation of subtitle translation and then elaboratesmemetics and its combination with subtitle translation. Then on the basis of collectinglarge quantity of data the thesis goes on to discuss subtitle translation under theguidance of memetics with Desperate Housewives as case study and proposes threesubtitle translation strategies for references. Firstly, content loyalty and patternnovelty. Genotype memes are the same content transmitted with different pattern. Forthose memes, translation memes with novel patterns should be pursued under thecircumstances of content loyalty to arouse the audience’s interest and achieve thetranslation effect. Secondly, same pattern and different contents. As there are uniquephonological, lexical, syntactical and discourse patterns in both Chinese and English,phenotype memes should pursue different contents under the circumstance of samepattern. Indeed, the basic information and meaning should be the same. The differenceis the expression. Thirdly, culture-distinctiveness. Culture is a decisive factor insubtitle translation. As subtitle translation is the transition between two languages andcultures, in the limited time and space, subtitle translators should select those memesthat are easy for the audiences to appreciate and understand and conform to theaudiences’ language and culture. Research conclusion can be summarized: memeticshas a remarkable directive function for subtitle translation. The author hopes that thisthesis can inspire and help those subtitle translators.