Research On Subtitle Translation Of The Big Bang Theory From The Perspective Of Memetics

With the improvement of technology and the deepening of intercultural communication,more and more western audiovisual products have flooded into China.With the funny plots and humorous lines,the sitcoms not only bring entertainment for domestic audience but also provide an important channel for the audience to know more about the western languages and cultures.However,due to the differences in language and culture between China and the west,as well as the limited language profiency of the audience,the subtitle translation is gaining increasing importance.Memetics,based on Darwin's Theory of Evolution,is a new theory in interpreting cultural evolution with core term “meme” to refer to the basic information unit for cultural transmission.Based on Memetics,translation is a process to transmit the source meme to the potential hosts in target culture.In recent years,subtitle translation has gained an increasing attention from the academic circle.However,most of the researches are based on personal experiences without adequate guidance from the new theories.Therefore,in order to make up for this shortcoming,this thesis intends to study subtitle translation from the perspective of Memetics and takes the phenomenally popular sitcom The Big Bang Theory as a case study with the purpose of providing some guidance for current subtitle translation practice.Under the theoretical framework of Memetics and subtitle translation,this thesis draws an analogy between the subtitle translation process and the four stages of meme replication and accordingly constructs a memetic model for the subtitle translation and verifies the feasibility of applying Memetics to subtitle translation.With the guidance of this model,examples are selected and presented to analyze the replication and transmission process of memes,and demonstrates the decisive role of selection criteria in the process of subtitle translation.Subsequently,this thesis discusses how to apply the basic translation strategy domestication and foreignization to subtitle translation.Based on the analysis,this thesis draws the conclusion that the more selection criteria a meme satisfies,the more possibility it will be pass through the process of memereplication and transmission successfully.Moreover,in the practice of subtitle translation,the domestication and foreignization strategies should be combined to fulfill both the directed and creative expectations of audience.This paper applies the theory of Memetics to the study of subtitle translation in order to provide some reference for the practice and researches for English subtitle translation in the future.