Transmuting Or Transgressing?-A Case Study Of Chinese-English Subtitling Of Culture-Loaded Words In The U.S. Version Of Empresses In The Palace

Nowadays, the cultural communication between China and the world has become increasingly frequent and one of the important manifestations is that more and more Chinese films and TV dramas are introduced to the world. Films and TV dramas with Chinese characteristics often contain plenty of Chinese culture, which is expressed through culture-loaded words. Therefore, the subtitling of culture-loaded words matters a lot for the target-language audience to the understanding of Chinese culture.Generally speaking, there are two strategies in dealing with culture-loaded words, namely domestication and foreignization. Domestication aims at weakening the cultural differences of the foreign text by transmuting the source-language expressions into target-language expressions, whereas foreignization emphasizes on retaining the cultural differences by transgressing the target-language expressions.Domestication and foreignization are interdependent and according to different translation purposes and text types, they have different proportions in a translation. The subtitlers often have to make flexible changes between domestication and foreignization, or rather, transmuting and transgressing. For example, most Chinese scholars hold that in order to promote Chinese culture in cross-cultural communication, translators should give priority to foreignization with domestication as complement.Different from written translation, subtitling is constrained by time and space, which demand the adjustments of translation strategies. At present, there are not many studies on Chinese-English subtitling of culture-loaded words. Considering the situation, this thesis will, taking the U.S. version of Empresses in the Palace as an example, classify the culture-loaded words in this drama into five categories:ecological culture-loaded words, material culture-loaded words, social culture-loaded words, religious culture-loaded words and linguistic culture-loaded words according to Nida’s classification of culture. Then, the thesis will summarize, collect and analyze the translation of culture-loaded words in this drama in the hope of providing theoretical explanations and feasible strategies and methods for the Chinese-English subtitling of culture-loaded words.