Internet Buzzwords As Domestication In E-C Subtitling Of American Sitcoms

Against the background of globalization, Chinese people are gaining more and more access to foreign films and television programs which have built a bridge for the international cultural communication and exchanges and made possible cultures and civilizations created and developed by different countries and nations are promptly shared by all human beings. Films and television programs change and influence audiences on various aspects such as thinking patterns, aesthetic perspectives, moral values and behavioral patterns. Translated subtitles are an important tool by which Chinese people understand and appreciate English films and television programs and whether the ideas and themes of which can be appropriately transmitted to Chinese audiences largely depend upon the quality of translated subtitles most of the time. And now as the popularization of Internet and people’s growing interest in new words and expressions, adopting Internet buzzwords has become a trend in E-C subtitle translations of English films and television programs, which is worth attention and professional researches of scholars in the field of translation studies.Unlike most of previous researches or studies that examine Internet buzzwords from a monolingual perspective, this thesis taking Internet buzzwords as a device sets out to examine Internet buzzwords in a bilingual way, probing into their causes for emergence, history and range of usage and text effects. This thesis’s analyses and interpretations on different kinds of texts taken from2Broke Girls and other English films and television programs demonstrate that the usage of Internet buzzwords in the process of translation can bring about domestication and more unexpectedly foreignization, using domestication and foreignization in subtitle translation is not always ideologically motivated, adopting Internet buzzwords as domestication in subtitle translation in particular, and using Internet buzzwords appropriately as domestication can achieve the ultimate aim of subtitle translation--providing as much information as possible in the shortest time--and fit the audiences’psychological expectations. Also people’s acceptance of even preference for using Internet buzzwords in subtitle translation with careful choices was revealed through a questionnaire on people’s attitudes toward using Internet buzzwords in subtitle translation. Hence, it was suggested that domestication can be and should be applied in subtitle translation of soaps with careful and considerate choice for its enabling power in bridging over incommensurability between cultures.