A Comparative Analysis Of Legend Of Zhen Huan And Empresses In The Palace From The Perspective Of Intercultural Communication

With the emergence and development of globalization,culture exchanges in international communities are intensified and the channels of cultural communications are increasingly diverse.TV series,one channel of cultural communications,contributes a lot to cross-cultural communication.However,the exportation of Chinese TV series has long been restricted to East Asia,Southeast Asian countries or the local Chinese channels of European and American countries.Very few Chinese TV series could enter the mainstream market of European and American countries.Legend of Zhen Huan made its premier in 2011 in China and caused a sensation.Later,it was released in Southeast Asian countries and Japan and harvested high audience ratings.In 2015,being reedited and translated by an American producing team,the ratings champion was adapted to Empresses in the Palace and landed Netflix,a mainstream media website in the USA.This thesis makes a comparison between Legend of Zhen Huan and Empresses in the Palace based on Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions,Cultures Context and Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis from the perspective of cross-cultural communication.Firstly,the author presents the similarities and differences of Legend of Zhen Huan and Empresses in the Palace.Secondly,the author elaborates the deep reasons contributing to theses differences.The major findings are as follows:(1)The similarities of Legend of Zhen Huan and Empresses in the Palace are that both of two TV series serve as anti-feudal works and both involve Zhen Huan's love and friendship.The differences lie in the plots and dialogues.Firstly,the plots of the two TV series are different.In Legend of Zhen Huan,the oppression and persecutions of female groups caused by feudal imperial power and patriarchy are attached great importance,while in Empresses in the Palace,Zhen Huan's fighting against the feudal society as an individual is highlighted.In Legend of Zhen Huan,the links between individuals and their families as well as the imperial power'soppression on the female are highlighted.In Empresses in the Palace,the story line of Zhen Huan's love is retained.And plots not closely related to the story line are omitted and the scenes of senior Zhen Huan are added.And Zhen Huan's fight against the feudal society are emphasized.Three reasons could account for these changes.The first one is that the protagonist,Zhen Huan,as a hero against the feudal society is emphasized,which conforms to individualism held by Americans.The second reason is that retaking the scenes of senior Zhen Huan sets up the background context for the whole TV film and therefore makes the six-episode TV film easily understood.The third reason is that these changes make the whole TV series a compact one and the story line of love makes the TV series be of more universality.The author would analyze these reasons based on Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions and Cultures Context.(2)The languages are different between the two TV series.The subtitle language here refers to the sentences in the subtitle in the two TV series.Firstly,the author lists the characteristics of the subtitle in the two TV series.Then these differences are summarized into two groups: the sentence structure and the sentence meaning.In the aspect of sentence structure,Legend of Zhen Huan is characteristic of paratactic sentences,subjective-oriented Sentences and end weight in sentence focus and some sentences are arranged symmetrically.In Empresses in the Palace,sentence structure is logically clear;objectivity is appreciated and the information focus is put in front of the sentence and most sentences are not arranged symmetrically.In the aspect of sentence meaning,a large amount of allusions,poems and idioms are used in Legend of Zhen Huan and therefore the sentences are endowed with rich culture connotations.And an implicit way to express the true meaning is widely employed.In Empresses in the Palace,many translation strategies are used to elaborate the culture connotation and coordinate the culture differences in the sentence.And the sentences are plain and direct.These differences are caused by the encoders' thought patterns and the audience's low-context culture.And therefore the author would illustrate these changes grounded on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and Cultures Context.Some references are provided for Chinese culture “going out” through TV series.To achieve the cultural docking,we need to take the target-country's cultural dimensions,cultures context and thought patterns into consideration.And in the aspect of TV series,choosing universal theme,integrating the cultural values of source-language country;adding more leading-in scenes are encouraged.And the subtitles are supposed to reduce the dependence on the context and conform to the thought patterns of target-language countries.And retaining the main plot,omitting those loosely-linked plots to make the plots compact are welcomed.And the author gives a detailed description of the major findings and elaborates the limitation of the study and points out the suggestions for the future study.