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摘 要

在全球化的时代背景下，伴随着大众媒体和科技的快速发展，特别是因特网在中国群众间的普及，大量美国出品的影视作品以前所未有的速度进入中国，并从此成为中国观众们了解异域文化的一个重要途径。因此，字幕翻译中文化信息的传递对外国影视剧作品在中国的传播具有重要的意义。本文旨在通过个案分析和理论分析，进而研究美剧字幕中文化专有项的翻译策略。

基于对国内字幕翻译情况的分析,本文发现：重视文化交流的学者倾向于选择异化作为主要的字幕翻译策略，而强调观众接受度的学者则倾向于选择归化。本文将以《破产姐妹》中文化专有项的翻译为个案，分别对出现在字幕翻译中的五种翻译方法——直译、注释、释义、省略和替换进行分析，并详细分析这五种翻译方式所使用的具体语境。

根据对个案的研究，作者分别分析了异化和归化各自在字幕翻译中扮演的角色。作者还从文化交流的需要和观众对异域文化的期待这两方面，表明了字幕翻译对异化的诉求。

关键词：文化专有项 字幕翻译 异化 归化

Introduction

1.1 Definition and Classification of Culture-Specific Items

In 1996, a celebrated Spanish translator Javier Franco Aixela, invents the concept of culture-specific items. According to Aixela, culture-specific items are “ those textually actualized items whose function and connotations in a source text involve a translation problem in their transference to a target text, whenever this problem is a product of the nonexistence of the referred item or of its different intertextual status in the cultural system of the readers of the target text.” The culture-specific items“does not exist of itself, but as the result of a conflict arising from any linguistically represented reference in a source text which, when transferred to a target language, poses a translation problem due to the nonexistence or to the difference value (whether determined by ideology, usage, frequency,etc.) of the given item in the target language culture. In this paper, culture-specific items refer to any words or phrases with the above-mentioned features, which are difficult for the target audience to understand.

CSIs,which are differently classified by scholars, actually have all kinds of types. Aixela has given two basic categories of CSIs based upon the views of the translators:“proper nouns and common expressions( for want of a better term to cover the world of objects, institutions, habits and opinions restricted to each culture and that cannot be included in the field of proper names)”.

Eugene Nida, another well-known American translator, also introduces his categorization of CSIs that is clearer and more specified(Eugene Nida 1964): (1) ecological culture which includes seasons, plants, deserts,etc; (2) material culture which consists of tools and objects,etc; (3) social culture that covers social organizations, class, social practices and social implications of actions; (4) religious culture that includes titles and names of deities and the religious routine and beliefs; (5) linguistic culture, which refers to the specific characteristics of the respective language and may be best treated under phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical factors.

Several scholars have categorized culture-specific items into different types, but this paper will center on two groups: 1) proper nouns; 2) idioms.

1.2 Introduction to Subtitle Translation

As we enter into the 21^st century, it is not hard to notice that subtitle translation is a comparatively new type of translation which has been witnessed a rapid development in the past few years, and it also has become“an increasingly important area in the movie and television series field”(Qian Shaochang 2000), grabbing lots of academics’ eyes consequently. So according to dictionary, subtitle translation is expressed as “a process during which words are printed over an audio-visual product in a foreign language to translate what is being said by the actors.” In his journal, a prominent scholar named Birgit Nedergard Larsen from abroad, has given a detailed definition to subtitle translation, that is“a special type of language transfer: a written, condensed translation of a predominantly spoken original.”(1993) It is known that subtitle translation involves both the source language and the target language. When a new overseas audio-visual product is introduced to China, someone has to do the translation work. During this course, the language barriers are overcome and cross-cultural communication is thus realized.

Apart from the fact that so many elements are included in subtitle translation, cultural constraint, which actually concerns the scholars in the circle, must be taken into account while translating subtitles. Cultural constraint is some difficulty presented in the translation process that brings about quite a lot of problems to translators. And due to cultural differences, culture-specific items are difficult to express in subtitling. Hence, subtitle translation from the culture angle should be paid more attention to for future researches.

1.3 Significance of the Study

American movies and TV series are the only mediums of entertainment, as well as of communication. In other words, the translation lies in the exchanges of ideas and cultures between different countries. However, the greatest difficulty translators face in the process is the cultural differences rather than differences between languages. In dealing with cultural differences in translation, translation of culture-specific items is the hardest part. Culture-specific items that are rich in social and cultural implications are large in number in varieties of literary genres. Additionally, culture-specific items are more distinct in audiovisual products, especially the sitcoms like Two Broke Girls. It is undoubtedly that a better translation of culture-specific items in subtitles is of importance for translators. In this paper, translation strategies applied to deal with culture-specific items would be discussed, based on a study on subtitle translation in Two Broke Girls, in the hope of providing some guidelines for subtitlings.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Previous Studies on Subtitle Translation Abroad

Scholars in the Europe are the earliest ones who start conducting subtitle translation theory studies. Benefited from close academic exchanges among different European countries, plus the scholarly importance attached to the subtitling, audio-visual translation and relevent researches make European scholars leading figures in this realm.

In 1974, Cay Dollerup published an article—On Subtitles in Television Programmes in Babel magazine. He separately discussed the subtitle translation for the first time, summarized some problems existed in subtitling, and pointed out the important value of subtitle translation in the sphere of foreign language teaching(Dollerup 1974)

In 1976, Istvan Fodor published his famous work—Film Dubbing: Phonetic, Semiotic, Esthetic and Psychological Aspects, which delved into the problems of film dubbing mainly from the acoustic perspective. According to Fodor, due to the particularity and irreplaceability of each country’s language and culture, it is nearly impossible to achieve a perfect“synchronization” in every aspect when engaged in subtitle translation(Fodor 1976).

In 1982, Christopher Titford came up with a new concept—constrained translation in his article Subtitling: Constrained Translation. He thinks that as a medium, the limit of movie and television series itself is the major cause for subtitlers to hit rocks in real practice(Titford 1982).

In 1991, Georg-Michael Luyken, along with other four professionals from different European countries, published the book Overcoming Language Barriers in Television:Dubbing and Subtitling for the European Audience. It analyzes large numbers of statistics about the volume of translated products, labor costs and audience preferences in a more detailed way. In particular, he continues to study various translation modes that applied to the linguistic transfer of audio-visual products(Luyken 1991).

In 1992, Jan Ivarsson, a Swedish scholar, published the work Subtitling for the Media: A Handbook of an Art. The book presents the development history of subtitle translation, which is of high guiding significance to subtitling practice(Ivarsson 1992).

Among these well-known academics, the most representative ones are Yves Gambier and Henrik Gottlieb, two eminent translation theorists. A very distinguished expert in this field, Finnish translator Yves Gambier, is the author of many monographs, namely, Language Transfer and Audiovisual Communication: A Bibliography. He contributes a lot in settling the problems of translation pattern classification, translation strategy, translation audience,etc(Gambier 1997). Henrik Gottlieb, another professional who’s from Denmark, not only conducts a comprehensive study on the subtitling, but puts forward some original views with regard to the application of subtitle translation in the teaching domain(Gottliebamp;Gambier 2001).

2.2 Previous studies on Subtitle Translation in China

Compared with the researches done from other countries, China made a late start in the area of movie and television series translation studies. However, as cultural exchanges become growingly active, a long-term development has been made from scratch.

Qian Shaochang, the domestic scholar who points out in the early stage the importance of audio-visual translation practice and theory research. He makes great contributions to this field and translates numerous movies and TV series, for example, Growing Pains, Root, The Thorn Birds,etc. which equips him with rich experience. In 2000, he published a paper entitled Audiovisual Translation: an increasingly important area in the translation, in which he makes an appeal that audio-visual translation should be taken seriously in the realm of translation. In his paper, he stresses that nowadays, audiences of audio-visual products outnumber those of literary works, and audio-visual translation has more influence than that of literature translation. He also points out five major characteristics of lanaguage in audio-visual products—listening, comprehensiveness, instantaneity, popularity of subtitles and subtitles with no note(Qian Shaochang 2000), which has a strong applicablity and guidence for the British and American TV series.

Zhang Chunbai, in A Primary Study on Film and TV Translations, highlights the instantaneity and popularity of language in audio-visual products. Meanwhile, he, on the basis of summarizing the practical experience, sums up the difference between audio-visual translation and literature translation, as well as some approaches and techniques of movie and TV series translation(Zhang Chunbai 1998).

Li Yunxing makes a special effort to investigate subtitling from the discourse perspective. In 2001, in his paper Strategies for Transalting Subtitles, he discusses the functions and features of subtitle translation based on his own experience, and states that the time-space of subtitles should be put a strain on, making it possible to provide the most effective information in the limited time-space(Li Yunxing 2001).

Since the 1990s, domestically renowned scholar Ma Zhengqi, has done a lot of translation work about audio-visual products. In 1997, a paper On the Basic Principles of Audio-visual Translation is published. He mainly discusses some basic principles that audio-visual translations should adhere to. He points out that movie and TV series translation need to “make the disposition of the characters distinctive”, “try hard to achive a genuine and real-touching art effect”, and “make great efforts to create artistic characters that suit both the refined and popular tastes”(Ma Zhengqi 1998). In 2005, his work An Introduction to Film and TV Translation comes out. This book focuses its attention on audio-visual translation, talking about the laws, principles and strategies that all applied in the film dubbing from various perspectives(Ma Zhengqi 2005).

2.3 Culture-Specific Items in Subtitle Translation

In the past, investigations on subtitle translation studies have been all along concentrating on the linguistic and technical perspectives. It is not until the middle of the 20^th century that did translators begin to take into account the cultural elements in translation research.

Although many Chinese scholars conduct researches in the sphere of subtitle translation, most of their studies still pay high attention to the choosing of translation strategies: foreignization or domestication. Nowadays, these two strategies are crucially discussed as usual in the subtitle translation studies. Consequently, researches in this field from the culture angle unaviodably clash a disagreement on the choosing of translation strategies: foreignization and domestication.

Zhang Chunbai has no doubts about the fact that subtitle translation is to serve the public, so subtitlers should adopt free translation. In addition, concerning the translation of culture-specific items, he is inclined to choose domestication, which means that the cultural factors in the source text are to be replaced by a corresponding one in the TL(Zhang Chunbai 1998). Ma Zhengqi has done some researches on the special characteristics of subtitle translation and made a detailed analysis of some principles that subtitle translations should abide by, namely, using the colloquial language, the consistency of the subtitle translation, satisfying the emotional needs of audio-visual products,etc(Ma Zhengqi 2003). Academics represented by Zhang Chunbai and Ma Zhengqi whose focus is on target reader’s acceptability to subtitle translation promote the choosing of domestication in the subtitle translation.

Zhao Chunmei(2002), in her paper Four Pairs of Conflicts in the Audio-visual Translation, believes that in translation process, translators should try their best to preserve the unqiue features and cultural connotations in the source text. She calls for a literal translation method in subtitle translation. Only when literal method is of no use can the paraphrasing method be exercised. Therefore, we can see that in the realm of subtitle translation researches at home, there are also academics like Professor Zhao encourages the use of foreignization in the subtitle translation in order to facilitate cultural exchanges.

2.4 Translation Strategies of Culture-Specific Items

Translation, technically, is an intercultural communicative activity that includes the transference of both codes of two different languages and the cultural connotation.

Many translators from home and abroad contribute a lot to the translation strategies of CSIs, among which the most famous one belongs to Aixela’s eleven translation strategies(Aiexla 1996): (1) Repetition: reproducing the source text; (2) Orthographic Adaptation: transforming the alphabetic system or the sound; (3) Linguistic(non-cultural) translation: preserving the denotative meaning of the original as much as possible; (4) Extratextual Gloss: using the above-mentioned three strategies to add interpretation with the help of footnotes, comments, endnotes,etc. (5) Intratextual Gloss: same as the previous one except that explanation will be put in the body to avoid disturbing the readers; (6) Synonymy: using various ways to translate culture-specific items to avoid repetition; (7) Limited Universalization: selecting a CSI from another source culture that target readers are familiar with; (8) Absolute Universalization: selecting a non-culture-specific items to translate CSIs; (9) Naturalization: choosing CSIs in the TL to Translate the ones in the SL; (10) Deletion: leaving out the CSIs in the TL; (11) Autonomous Creation: introducing a culture-specific item into the TL culture. From where Zhang Nanfeng stands, the former 5 strategies are a part of foreignization, while the latter 6 belong to the domesticating approaches( Zhang Nanfeng 2004).

Academics from home also put forward several strategies to deal with the CSIs in their works or researches.

In 1997, Qiu Maoru presents his seven procedures of establishing “Cultural Equivalence”: (1) preservation of the original cultural color; (2) transference; (3) transliteration; (4) transliteration with a generic term; (5) substitution of CSIs in the source text for those of the TL; (6) elucidation; (7) translation of the meaning of cultural expressions in a foreign context(Qiu Maoru 1997).

The same year, Wang Dongfeng, another distinguished professor in the circle of cultural translation, also makes some discussions about culture and translation. As a result, he sums up five methods to deal with cultural defaults in the practice(Wang Dongfeng 1997):(1) Extratextual Gloss; (2) Explication;(3) Domestication;(4) Omission; (5)Literal Translation. Although Professor Wang has not stated the application areas of these five approaches, his contributions have made a difference on the reasearches on the cultural factors.

3. Culture-Specific Items in Two Broke Girls

3.1 A Brief Introduction to Two Broke Girls

Two Broke Girls is an American television sitcom that debuted on CBS during the 2011-12 television season. The series follows the misadventures of roommates Max, who comes from a poor working-class family, and Caroline, who was born born rich but is now disgraced and penniless—working together at a Brooklyn restaurant, and also starting their own cupcake business. Other characters include their boss, Han Lee, an Ukranian cook, Oleg, and Earl, an African-American cashier, as well as their neighbor Sophie.

Two Broke Girls is very popular with American youngsters currently. It is rather close to the daily life in the United States, mirroring their social cultures, customs and values, therefore, CBS announced that Two Broke Girls would return for a sixth season. There are a lot of humorous effect in the sitcom, created by the quotation of pop culture and American historical allusions, as well as tons of culture-loaded words. Thus, Two Broke Girls has certain research values in the aspect of culture-specific items in subtitle translation. All the examples are selected from the first season with the help of Sohu, Ragbear, YyeTs and other popular subtitle groups.

3.2 Proper Nouns

It is beyond question that in the 21^st century, the intercultural communication between different countries is getting increasingly intensifying. However, there still exist some words and expressions that people can not understand in the exotic cultures. Since these words and expressions actually have no equivalents in the TL culture, such kind of cultural defaults stops both the language learners and audience from getting close to the source language culture. In this paper, such kinds of items are called cultural images. Cultural images refer to the images that are generated in specific cultural backgrounds. Since sitcoms are deeply rooted in the real life of people, it can be clearly seen that cultural images from daily lives and literary works account for the majority in culture-specific items of sitcoms. In Two Broke Girls, many characters from films and TV series and stars appear. In the first season, Robert Pattinson, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian can be seen in the dialogue. What’s more, drinks such as Decaf, Espresso, Rum, foods such as Lasagna, Tart, Pretzel,these unfamiliar issues for people in other cultures show their appearances in Two Broke Girls.

3.3 Idioms

It is undeniable that the idiom is the crystallization of language, since it mirrors the most appealing aspects of language. The word "idiom" is originated from Greek. It originally refers to an expressing means of human language with special forms. According to Webster's New International Dictionary, an idiom refers to "an expression fixed in the usage of one language that is special to itself either in view of its grammatical construction or its meaning which cannot be taken as a whole from the overall meanings of its elements." The cultural differences shown by idioms are mainly shown in terms of environments, customs, religions and history in different countries all over the world. It is believed that English idioms include common sayings, proverbs, slangs,etc. In Two Broke Girls, idioms are also pervasive. Idioms such as “On the house”(请客), “Spit it out”(说吧), “Hang in there”(坚持下去) and so on show up frequently in dialogues.

4. Translation Strategies of Culture-Specific Items-A Case Study on Two Broke Girls

4.1 Translation Strategies Applied in Two Broke Girls: Foreignization

In this chapter, literal translation and annotation are used as two main methods to deal with culture-specific items from foreignization angle.

4.1.1 Literal Translation

Literal translation refers to the literally translating of culture-specific items in subtitles. By doing this, cultural defaults in culture-specific items can be ignored. Under normal circumstances, if there is no compensation for cultural defaults in culture-specific items during translation process, literal translation is preferred only when the culture-specific items included in the subtitles are those, namely, names, place names, famous literary work with great awareness among people in the TL culture. In other words, these culture-specific items should be in accordance with the social and cultural awareness of most Chinese audience.

Example 1:

Source text:

Caroline: Come on, it’s just a bathroom.

Max: Just a bathroom? It’s the Louvre of pooping.

Target text:

卡洛琳：拜托，就只是间浴室嘛。

麦克斯：什么就只是间浴室，这是茅坑界的卢浮宫吧。(Sohu) ( Literal translation)

麦克斯：就是浴室？简直是便便卢浮宫。(YDY) (Literal translation)

In this dialogue, Caroline shows Max her mansion that she used to live, the luxurious decoration amazes Max. And Max compares her bathroom as the Louvre of pooping. Although Louvre is the king’s palace in French history, it is well known to Chinese audience thanks to cultural exchanges between different countries. Hence, literal translation is favored here.

Example 2:

Source text:

Caroline: This is so romantic. Jumping over the back wall to drop down and see you in the middle of the night? It’s very Romeo and Juliet.

Target text:

卡洛琳：太浪漫了。跳过后院的墙，只为了在半夜见你一面，就像罗密欧与茱丽叶。(Sohu) (Literal Translation)

卡洛琳：真够罗密欧与朱丽叶的。(YDY) (Literal translation)

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