On Subtitle Translation Of English Sitcoms From The Perspective Of The Norm Theory

The increasing popularity of American sitcoms among Chinese audience demonstrates not only the charms of these audiovisual works but also the great success of subtitle translation as a means of cultural medium. Subtitling keeps the original flavor to the largest extent and serves as an effective and economic means of showing different cultures. Besides, many viewers see subtitled movies and TV programs as a means to learn a foreign language and foreign culture.This thesis attempts to study the translational norms governing subtitle translation in English sitcoms through descriptive analysis. Translational norm is a very important concept in Toury's descriptive translation theory. By analyzing the significance or acceptability of target text in target culture system and comparing the target text with the source text, strategies adopted by translators in the translation process and norms governing translators'choices could be found and further used to guide future translation practice and other relevant activities. Toury classifies translational norms into three categories:preliminary norms, initial norms and operational norms. Preliminary norms consist of the choice of translation policies and the directness of the translations; initial norms are understood as the basic choice that translators make between two alternatives—adequacy and acceptability; operational norms refer to the specific translation techniques adopted in actual translation practice, including matricial norms and textual-linguistic norms.Descriptive translation study offers us a more objective model for research. This thesis takes the examples chosen from The Big Bang Theory and makes an analysis about subtitle translation from theory to practice to find out the specific strategies translators adopt in subtitling and the norms governing their choices, hoping to give some enlightenment to future subtitle translation by analyzing the translation techniques used by translators and factors that need to be taken into consideration.This thesis consists of six parts, which are organized as follows:Chapter One introduces the research background and significance.Chapter Two reviews the study related to the norm theory, subtitle translation and previous norm studies on subtitle translation.Chapter Three touches upon the theoretical basis of this thesis, namely Even-Zohar's Poly-system Theory and Gideon Toury's Norm Theory.Chapter Four is an overview of subtitling from the perspective of the Norm Theory, which is composed of five sections:the first section discusses features and constraints of subtitle translation; in the following sections, the norm theory is used to study the specific techniques for subtitling.Chapter Five is a descriptive study of the subtitle translation in the English sitcom The Big Bang Theory, from which subtitles are chosen as examples for analysis. After a brief introduction to this English sitcom and its translators, specific norms observed in its subtitle translation will be analyzed.Chapter Six gives a summary of the research, implication of this study and suggestions for future translation and studies.