On E-C Subtitle Translation From The Perspective Of Cultural Translation Theory

Nowadays,the communication among different countries,especially cultural exchanges,is increasingly frequent.Therefore,culture,as the soft power of a country,is receiving more and more attention.Under this circumstance,television and movie works which are windows to show different cultures are worth researching.Based on Susan Bassnett’s cultural translation theory,this dissertation,taking the American comedy television series Young Sheldon and FIX’s Chinese translation as its research object and applying literature research method,case analysis and experience summary,concludes that translators had better adopt foreignization strategy to translate terms that are closely related to the American beliefs,customs and important material culture and adopt domestication strategy when foreignization cannot produce the same effect.By dividing the cultural elements,summarizing subtitle translation principles and analyzing specific examples,this dissertation concludes eight methods for E-C subtitle translation,namely literal translation,literal translation with annotation,explicitation,explicitation with annotation,deduction,concretization,substitution,and transcreation.Meanwhile,three main problems are found in online subtitle groups and related suggestions are proposed.Firstly,the cultural meaning behind the original language is often ignored.To solve this problem,translators should enhance their cultural awareness and get familiar with the cultural background of the series in advance.Secondly,polysemous words are often mistranslated.In this case,translators should deduce the most appropriate explanation by referring to authoritative dictionaries and making use of the context.Thirdly,there exists the problem of inconsistency of proper nouns.To address this problem,translators should refer to information related to the series,discuss the translation of certain terms with translators in the same subtitle group and the proofreader must review the Chinese version carefully.To summarize,this dissertation hopes to provide useful translation methods and suggestions for online subtitle translators.