摘 要

近十年来，越来越多的国外影视作品被引入到国内，字幕翻译也因此成为一个热门的讨论话题，和其他形式的翻译不同，字幕翻译有着强烈的时间和空间限制，译制的字幕必须在迎合影视作品文化背景的条件下，在画面和内容长度上和原文帧帧对应。因此，有效准确的传递原文的意思有一定的难度，而其中文化缺省的翻译更为困难。译者不仅要翻译出基本意思，同时需要传递文化内涵。

本文从文化缺省的角度，以美国电视剧《老妈老妈浪漫史》为案例分析英译汉字幕中的文化缺省翻译。本文主要阐述了文化缺省产生的因素和主要来源，从五种不同的文化缺省展开分析。在此基础上，着重列举了一些在不同情形下，处理文化缺省较为常见的翻译策略。本文意在找寻不同情况下最为合适的文化缺省翻译策略，帮助受众更好地理解电影中的文化内容、感受其风土人情；同时对未来的字幕翻译提出些许建议。但由于写作时间和收集数据的有限，本文有一些地方仍待改进，例如文化缺省类别的划分不够细致、源字幕的收集缺乏调理等。

关键词：老爸老妈浪漫史；字幕翻译；文化缺省

Abstract

There is an increasing number of foreign films have been introduced to China in the last decade, and the subtitle translation has become one of the major focuses in the field. Unlike other forms of translation, subtitle translation featured with strong time and space restriction, which means it has to be synchronized with the original subtitle both in word length and movie image with appropriate time background. Thus, conveying the meaning of the film effectively and accurately is hard, and the problem of cultural default is particularly difficult. Because when dealing with cultural default information, translator not only should concern the equivalent of basic meaning but also the cultural connotation.

From the perspective of cultural default, this thesis attempts to analyze the English-Chinese subtitle translation with a case study of an American popular serial How I Met Your Mother, which focuses on the causes of cultural default and elaborates several techniques of cultural default subtitle translation. This thesis aims to help the audience to bridge the gap exerted by the cultural default and maximize their understanding of the film. More important, the thesis aims to make few suggestions for future research and improving the quality of subtitle translation. However, due to the limitation of time, it may not be easy to pick up examples completely, and presumably the categories of cultural default listed are not classified as specifically as they can be.

Key Words: How I Met Your Mother; subtitle translation; cultural default

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literary Review 3

2.1 Definition and Causes of Cultural default 3

2.2 Sources of Cultural Default 4

2.3 Studies Aboard and at Home 5

3 Case Study of How I Met Your Mother 7

3.1 Brief Introduction of How I Met Your Mother 7

3.2 Cultural Default Analysis of How I Met Your Mother 7

3.2.1 Tech-economic cultural default 7

3.2.2 Social cultural default 8

3.2.3 Ideational cultural default 9

3.2.4 Literacy cultural default 10

3.2.5 Linguistic cultural default 11

3.3 A Summary 12

4 Strategies for Cultural Subtitle Translation 13

4.1 Domesticating Translation 13

4.2 Supplementary Translation 14

4.3 Foreignizing Translation 15

4.4 Condensed Translation 16

4.5 A Summary 16

5 Conclusions 18

References 19

Acknowledgements 21

On Cultural Default in Subtitle Translation:

A Case Study of How I Met Your Mother

1 Introduction

As the rapid development of film industry, movies have become one of the most influential media globally. Many foreign films have been introduced to China in the last decade, which opened a window for Chinese to know the western world. During the process of appreciating foreign films, decent subtitle translation is absolutely necessary. However, due to the cultural default involved and subtitling’s own strong time and space restriction, it is a challenge to translate effectively and accurately. Because when dealing with cultural default information, translator should not only concern the equivalent of basic meaning but also the cultural connotation.

However, research on film subtitle translation has been done since early times in many western countries. Academic articles about subtitling translation were published on the famous journal such as: Babel, Meta and Target. Prominent figures in this field includes Christopher, Gambieramp;Gottilieb, Orero and so on, whose studies range from subtitling standardization, multimedia translation, translation strategies and quality control. Among them, Karamitroglou used polysystem and applied the latest translation concepts to subtitle translation, expanding the functionality and possibility of study in this field (Karamitroglou, 2000); Gottilieb coined several subtitling strategies and put them in translating English television programs to Danish (Gottilieb, 2001); and Chaume bridged gap between the film study and audiovisual translation. (Chaume, 2004)

As for the cultural default studies, many western scholars connected it with cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. Cultural default was regarded as higher-level complex knowledge structure. And Gillian Brown and George Yule pointed out that“it is a feature of these knowledge representations that they are organized in a fixed way as a complete unit of stereotypic knowledge in memory.” (Brown amp; Yule, 2000)

Those researchers make great contribution to the field of subtitle translation and cultural default, but some questions still remained. And this thesis wants to explore the uncovered questions. Specifically speaking, the present thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one introduces the research background and methodology, including overall review of current subtitle translation and cultural default. Chapter two focuses on the factors causing cultural default and its sources. Chapter three is the major part of the essay. Based on the features and factors of subtitle translation proposed above, How I Met Your Mother is analyzed from tech-economic cultural default, social cultural default, and ideal cultural default. Chapter four elaborates several techniques of cultural default subtitle translation, which are employed under different circumstances so that the audience can bridging the gap exerted by the cultural default and maximize the understanding of the film. The last chapter is the conclusion which includes the main findings and suggestions for future subtitle translation

2 Literary Review

When a movie is filmed, it is expected that the audience and the producer share the same background information so that the most efficient communication can be achieved. But there are cases that they share total different background knowledge, and the producer’s intention or meaning will be misread. Cultural default is the case. In this chapter, basic introduction of cultural default is made in details, including definition, causes and sources. In addition, relevant studies concerning cultural default and subtitling research are reviewed.

2.1 Definition and Causes of Cultural default

In a common society, it is not difficult for social members to communicate smoothly since they share the same language and similar cultural background information. When authors start to write or producers start to create, they have already had their own sense of cultural belonging, and it is natural for them to omit the background knowledge referred as common in people’s lives. However, cultural default does not happen often in people’s life. It will only be activated by special language environment and certain expected situations.

According to Brown and Yule, “cultural default is a type of default that the cultural background knowledge shared by the author or speaker and his or her intended readers or audience in communication is absent.” (Brown amp; Yule, 2000)

And according to Wang Dongfeng, “people without the same cultural background knowledge are confronted with the vacuum of sense in facing cultural default because they could not associate the information in the context and thus could not fully understand the discourse.” (Wang, 1997)