Domestication in C-E Subtitle Translation of American Empresses in the Palace from the Perspective of Skopos Theory

Recently, due to the influence of COVID-19 and the gradual deepening of cultural exchanges between China and the West, more and more audiences in the world choose to watch classic films and TV series at home. Chinese costume films and TV series are becoming more and more popular in western countries, while the subtitle translation plays a huge role in the spread of films and TV series. American Empresses in the Palace is a large-scale costume TV series widely praised by western audiences. Many of its subtitle translations adopt domestication strategies, making the subtitle more close to western audiences. Under the guidance of Skopos Theory, this paper takes the subtitle translation of American Empresses in the Palace as an example to discuss the practical application of domestication strategies in C-E subtitle translation, so as to further understand domestication strategies and provide more references for subtitle translation of other costume dramas.

Translating Contemporary New Zealand Poetry into French: Anna Jackson and Robert Sullivan

<p>This thesis aims to explore the translation process through an in-depth analysis of a large corpus of texts: the works of two contemporary New Zealand poets, Anna Jackson and Robert Sullivan, which I translate into French. The work of both poses translation challenges particularly in terms of intertextual and cultural allusions. These are exacerbated where there are profound differences between source and target cultures. I argue that poetry translation problematises the concepts of equivalence and faithfulness. In resonance with Christiane Nord’s skopos theory and her focus on the principle of loyalty, I suggest that an ideal balance can be reached, emphasising the translator’s responsibility as a mediator between cultures, chiefly by way of techniques of compensation, borrowing, transposition or modulation, explicitation or implicitation of the underlying cultural or intertextual layers, and by resorting to creativity. This emphasis does not do away with pragmatism. On the contrary, I justify my choices when confronted with a range of specific challenges, for instance between domesticating and foreignising, or in Nord’s terms instrumental and documentary translations, on the basis of a case-by-case analysis, thus prioritising a heuristic and experimental approach. Translating New Zealand poetry into French shows that, while it may be crucial in literary translation studies, particularly with regard to poetry translation, the distinction between instrumental and documentary nevertheless needs to be transcended. The two types not only overlap but need to do so for a translated poem to function in the target culture. To translate both Jackson’s recurrent references to text and Sullivan’s to culture – or as an umbrella concept, to translate allusion – I show that it is best to think in terms of balance rather than equivalence. Balance not only highlights the need for the translator to be creative and measured, it is a central element in the harmonisation process inherent to poetry translation.</p>

Translating Contemporary New Zealand Poetry into French: Anna Jackson and Robert Sullivan

<p>This thesis aims to explore the translation process through an in-depth analysis of a large corpus of texts: the works of two contemporary New Zealand poets, Anna Jackson and Robert Sullivan, which I translate into French. The work of both poses translation challenges particularly in terms of intertextual and cultural allusions. These are exacerbated where there are profound differences between source and target cultures. I argue that poetry translation problematises the concepts of equivalence and faithfulness. In resonance with Christiane Nord’s skopos theory and her focus on the principle of loyalty, I suggest that an ideal balance can be reached, emphasising the translator’s responsibility as a mediator between cultures, chiefly by way of techniques of compensation, borrowing, transposition or modulation, explicitation or implicitation of the underlying cultural or intertextual layers, and by resorting to creativity. This emphasis does not do away with pragmatism. On the contrary, I justify my choices when confronted with a range of specific challenges, for instance between domesticating and foreignising, or in Nord’s terms instrumental and documentary translations, on the basis of a case-by-case analysis, thus prioritising a heuristic and experimental approach. Translating New Zealand poetry into French shows that, while it may be crucial in literary translation studies, particularly with regard to poetry translation, the distinction between instrumental and documentary nevertheless needs to be transcended. The two types not only overlap but need to do so for a translated poem to function in the target culture. To translate both Jackson’s recurrent references to text and Sullivan’s to culture – or as an umbrella concept, to translate allusion – I show that it is best to think in terms of balance rather than equivalence. Balance not only highlights the need for the translator to be creative and measured, it is a central element in the harmonisation process inherent to poetry translation.</p>

The Impact of Translation Strategies on Second Language Writing

This paper seeks to demonstrate the importance of translation strategies as informed by Translation Studies in the foreign language (FL) classroom. The current study aims to map how translation, as perceived in Translation Studies, can be beneficial for students’ writing skills in the FL classroom. It focuses on undergraduate students in three French Composition classes: a control class in fall 2014, a second control class in fall 2015, and an experimental class in spring 2016, and explores how the students’ writing in the latter class improved after being exposed to translation strategies, such as explicitation, amplification, modulation, and approaches, such as Skopos theory. To determine whether translation strategies enable students to improve naturalness in L2 writing, their compositions and summaries were error coded using Kobayashi/Rinnert’s (1992) method of awkward form and wrong lexical choice, McCarthy’s collocation search, and Owen’s (1988) native speaker input. Statistical analyses were also performed. Results show that translation strategies are a useful tool to help students understand the foreign language and write more naturally.

Feminist Translation: Translator's Subjectivity, Strategies and Influences

Feminist translation theory is the academic fruit of the further development of feminist movement and also the portrayal of women's reflection fueled by feminism. Based on Skopos theory, the paper explores how translator's subjectivity acts in translation activities from the feminist perspective, aiming to reveal the relationship between feminist translation and translator's subjectivity. On the basis of a brief introduction, description and evaluation of major feminist translation theories, this study will analyze and evaluate different feminist translation strategies, and conduct critical research of translator's subjectivity, focusing on how feminist translation theory traveled on Chinese soil and the influence of translator's subjectivity combined with Chinese feminist translation.

The Textual and Cultural Features in High-quality Translation of Literary Prose

The quality of translation has been paid more attention in recent years, especially that of literary prose. The author aims to analyze the importance of textual and cultural features in high-quality translation of literary prose by using text typology theory and skopos theory. The author’s own revised translation of Eileen Chang’s literary prose is cited as an example in this essay.

How Much “Translation” Is in Localization and Global Adaptation?

The aim of this article is to contribute to the discourse by clarifying the extent to which complex intersemiotic action can still be regarded as translation. This will be shown by two of its major representatives (i.e., localization and [global] adaptation), both of which constitute contested issues in translation studies research with regard to their conceptual belonging. Functional translation theory will be employed to achieve this aim. Employing functional translation theory will show that the decisive criterion for the conceptual affiliation of any intersemiotic action to translation is whether or not it constitutes a predominantly language-based text-to-text transfer. Finally, given its successful implementation, this paper proposes functionalist skopos theory as one possible interdisciplinary methodological tool for intersemiotic action that is not only useful for translation studies but could also be useful, if accordingly adapted, for other neighboring disciplines, such as, for example, adaptation studies.