Abstract: In recent years, with the acceleration of the process of globalization, the U.S. Drama as a vehicle for communication and culture is increasingly popular in China. So interlingual subtitling as a communication tool becomes more and more important, the quality of translation has become an important indicator of whether a U.S. drama can pop up in the country. As the communicative translation can narrow the distance between the reader and the exotic culture in a short time, it became the best theory subtitle translation. In addition, the translation also is required to consider the audiences’ understanding of the target country for the language culture. However, domestic scholars far subtitle translation studies and literary translation, not deep enough, not wide enough. The world puts forward a higher requirement to subtitling. "Friends" is a popular American sitcom, focusing on six friends living in New York, from acquaintance to later experience a series of stories happened during 10 years of life together. Multiple lines of characters appear in a humorous way, a lot of puns, euphemisms, irony, metaphor, such use of rhetoric and wordplay makes the translation and processing of subtitles more difficult. This paper analyzes the differences between Chinese and Western cultures in subtitling performance, intended to a better understanding of cultural differences while the cross-communicative aspects of culture play positive role, as well as Western thinking. 

Key words:   friends； translation of subtitling； cross-cultural communication

CONTENTS

摘要

Abstract

1.  Introduction1

   1.1  friends

   1.2  Subtitling

      1.2.1 Definition of subtitling

      1.2.2 The feature of subtitling

      1.2.3 The subtitling process

  1.3 Theoretical Framework

1.3.1 Culture

    1.3.2 foreignizing method and domesticating method

2.   Literature Review 3

3.  Embodiment and handling of cultural differences in the "Friends" subtitling translation.5

   3.1 The application of semantic equivalence

   3.2 The application of image conversion

   3.3 The application of comment adding

   3.4 The application of foreignizing method

   3.5 The application of domesticating method

   3.6 The combination of foreignizing method and domesticating method

4.  The reasons for the differences between Chinese and American   culture7

   4.1 The impact of the economic system

   4.2The impact of geographical environment 

   4.3Chinese political culture and American economic culture

   4.4Chinese Confucian culture and American Christian Lord dominant culture

5.  Conclusion.8

   Bibliography.10

   Acknowledgements11