A Corpus-based Study Of Sanitization Norms Of Taboos In English-chinese Translated Movie Scripts

Taboo is defined as a cultural or religious custom that does not allow people to do,use or talk about a particular thing as people find it offensive or embarrassing.According to the Modern Chinese Dictionary,jinji(??)involves two layers of meanings,firstly,forbidden expressions or behaviors;secondly,things that should be avoided in medicine.In short,these words and expressions that ought to be avoided in daily usage are regarded as taboos.In the process of translation,the strategies utilized in translating taboos in movie scripts can be roughly divided into the following groups:literal translation,substitution,non-taboo translation and omission.This thesis attempts to discuss the sanitization norms of translating various taboos in English-Chinese translated movie scripts.The sanitization norms are the suspected adaptation of a source text reality to make it more palatable for the target audience.In this study,sanitization norms are realized through a series of translation strategies to eliminate those factors that go against the cultural mainstream,moral values,ideology and religious beliefs in target culture.Those factors may include some bad languages,slang,sexual descriptions,anti-ideology and all those expressions which may result in negative effects on the understanding of the target culture.An empirical study is conducted to describe the translations of different categories of taboos,thereinafter;the sanitization norms are described systematically in English-Chinese translated movie scripts.Firstly,sanitization norms are widely realized in the taboo translation of movie scripts,the main translation strategies adopted are non-taboo translation and omission.Between the two types of translation strategies,the latter amounts a higher proportion,which is in accordance with the overall simplification hypothesis in English-Chinese film line translation.Secondly,among the translation of the taboos,the sanitization norms of religious taboos are the most obvious.Based on the empirical study,this paper takes some social-cultural factors into the framework of norm theory to further explore the motivations of sanitization norms in translating taboos.Those underlying motivations driving the sanitization norms of taboo translation can be attributed to the following aspects.Firstly,in order to maximize the business profits of box office,the translators will subject themselves the acceptability of target audience and meet the requirements of censorship.In this case,non-taboo translation and omission are rather safer strategies than literal translation and substitution.Since there is not a film rating system in Chinese film market to regulate the target audience,the translation policy will show the preference for more conservative translation methods especially in terms of those sensitive contents like taboos.From a cultural point of view,one of the strengths of sanitization norms lies in that the target culture can be free from contamination of those taboos in source text.