On Documentary Subtitle Translation From The Perspective Of Memetics

Nowadays,as globalization brings more opportunities for cultural communication,film has become a great modern form of cultural exchange.Large numbers of foreign films and TV series are introduced into China.Among them,the documentary,a special recorded film(or TV series),exposes a lot of social and natural phenomena with its function of both education and entertainment,and is thus becoming increasingly popular.Whether the imported documentary is acceptable to the target audience is largely depends on its subtitle translation.Documentary narration differs a lot from film dialogues.However,domestic researches of documentary subtitles often neglect this fact,paying more attention to translation strategies drown from personal experience without the guide of interdisciplinary translation theories.Therefore,this paper chooses Memetics as a theoretical guidance to the studies of documentary subtitle translation and makes a case study of Wild China.Memetics,a relatively new theory in studies of cultural exchange,is originated from Darwin's Evolution Theory.Meme,the central subject of Memetics,has been regarded as "cultural gene".Following natural selection and survival of the fittest,memes are divided into two categories according to their competitiveness:strong memes and weak memes.Strong memes,with the features of copying-fidelity,fecundity and longevity,are easier to survive.Memetics was first introduced into studies of translation by Chesterman(1997).Translation itself,theoretical concepts,norms,strategies and values are all recognized as memes of translation.The purpose of this thesis is to study the relationship between Memetics and translation.Memetics will be used as a guide to studies of the subtitle translation of documentary films.Data collection,descriptive methods and explanatory methods are adopted in this thesis.Also,a case study is conducted as research methodology.With the discussion of the origins of Memetics and the theoretical model of Memetics,several translation strategies in the translation of documentary films are proposed,aiming to create strong memes.These findings demonstrate the incredibly important guidance of Memetics on the subtitle translation.In the end,the thesis also points out that translators should not pursue the creation of strong memes too much without their own thinking on the particular case of translation under issue.