The subtitling of sexual taboo from English to Chinese

• Main Author: Yuan, Long
• Other Authors: Díaz Cintas, Jorge
• Published: Imperial College London 2015
• Subjects: 418
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.684310

This research project sets out to analyse the subtitling of sexual taboo from English to Chinese with particular reference to the TV series Sex and the City, created by Darren Star and broadcast between 1998 and 2004. It commences with an introduction in which the theoretical and methodological scaffolding of the whole project is outlined, with a discussion taking place in the second chapter concerning one of the key concepts in this research, namely sexually taboo words and expressions. After approaching this concept as a subcategory within the wider subject of taboo and taboo language, a taxonomy of various sexually charged taboo categories is then put forward and used later on in the analysis of the case study of this research. The third chapter focuses on previous literature written on the translation of this kind of language and highlights two important cultural dimensions of sexually taboo language: its (im)polite nature and its potential to contribute to the formation of gender identity. Special emphasis is also paid to the intersection between translation and gender, to the potential interference of self-censorship in the translation of sexual references and to the specific case of translating sex-related language in China. The theoretical backbone of this project is refined in chapter four by focusing on the main challenges involved in the actual subtitling of sexual taboo. After a brief incursion into the technical particularities of subtitling, the attention is then shifted to the potential role played by ideology in linguistic transfer. Chapter five explores the various strategies that can be activated by translators when dealing with the subtitling into Chinese of sexually taboo language. This taxonomy is then exploited in chapter six, where an in-depth analysis of the data extracted from season one of Sex and the City is carried out. To finish with, chapter seven contains a summary of the most important findings yielded by this research with suggestions of avenues for further study related to the subtitling of taboo language.