A Comparative Study Of Translating Culture-Specific Items

Enjoying great popularity in China over the past years,Marvel movies have sparked academic discussions about the translations of character names in Chinese mainland,Taiwan,and Hong Kong.These character names are deemed culture-specific items(CSIs)as they are proper names.This thesis aims to shed light upon cultural commonality and regional differences in the three regions that influence translation decision making and to work out a more inclusive toolkit of strategies for future practices and studies of English-to-Chinese translation of CSIs.Drawing on Aixela’s translation model for CSIs,this study employs the qualitative research method to examine the Chinese translations of 60 characters in 28 Marvel films in the three regions,analyze their translation strategies,and explore their explanatory variables.Then the thesis examines the applicability of Aixela’s model to English-to-Chinese translation of CSIs.The study has four major findings.First,most character name translations in at least two regions reflect identical strategies.Second,"linguistic translation" is the most used method across the three regions,followed by "orthographic adaptation"."Intratextual gloss","naturalization",and "autonomous creation" are also adopted often.Thirdly,the explanatory variables clarifying the selection of translation strategies include:the nature of CSIs,such as their transparency and pre-established translations;textual parameters,such as image constraints and previous translations;supratextual parameters,such as the degree of linguistic prescriptivism,audience expectations,and the aim of the initiators.This study also recommends to modify "orthographic adaptation”into "transliteration",remove"synonymy",and add "attenuation".Moreover,replacing "extratextual gloss" with"explanation" and "intratextual gloss" with "explicitation" also serves to improve the applicability of Aixela’s translation techniques in English-to-Chinese translation.