Comparing English Comedy Subtitling Strategies: Taiwan and Hong Kong

• Main Authors: Jun-Qi Lin, 林濬棋
• Other Authors: Ying-Ting Chuang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/6v4s58

碩士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 應用英語系口筆譯碩士班 === 103 === This thesis aims to compare the domestication and foreignization strategies used by Taiwan and Hong Kong subtitlers and their effectiveness in humor translation. Based on reviewing the related the literatures, this thesis adopts the concepts of domestication and foreignization proposed by Venuti and Zabalbeascoa’s joke taxonomy to explore how the form, sound, meaning of the original text are dealt with by subtitlers through the domestication or foreignization strategies. After discussing three translation evaluation models, which are based on the LTTC Chinese and English Translation and Interpretation Competency Examinations, National Accreditation Examinations for Translators and Interpreters, and Translation Quality Index adopted by Lionbridge, three guidelines are drawn for developing an evaluation model for humor subtitles, as follows. First, a model combining qualitative and quantitative criteria will increase the objectivity of evaluations. Second, the weights of each error type and severity should be defined clearly and thoroughly. Third, “humor” should be prioritized as the most decisive factor in the evaluation process. The research data used in this thesis was extracted from Hollywood comedy DVDs, and the analysis can be divided into three parts: the first part of the analysis was to categorize the data collected according to the seven types of strategies. Next, the orientations of these strategies were divided into domestication or foreignization. Accordingly, the examples were further evaluated based on four perspectives: cultural, semantic, pragmatic, and textual. The overall grades of each version were thus compared and discussed. Three significant findings are presented in this thesis. To begin with, the collected data showed that the Taiwan subtitles showed a tendency to domestication, while the Hong Kong subtitles were mostly foreignized. In addition, most subtitling strategies, domestication- or foreignization-oriented, are used to deal with the semantic aspect of humor elements, and these humor elements are mostly appreciated by certain groups of audience. Third, foreignization strategies were almost as effective as domestication strategies, in contrast to the long-held assumption that a good comedy subtitle must be domesticated.