Abstract: Movie title translation, by transmitting core information to target audience, plays indispensable roles in cross cultural communication. Two strategies of movie title translation, domestication and foreignization, are often adopted in this process. Memetics is a new theory that explains the regularity of culture evolution deriving from Darwin’s theory of evolution. As an elementary unit of culture duplication and transmission, memes take mutual imitated and influenced ideas of cultural field from generation to generation. Since the theory of Memetics has presented much effectiveness in explaining domestication and foreignization in English movie title translation. Whereby, the paper discusses the application of domestication and foreignization from meme’s transmission, decoding, infection, coding aspects. It is hoped that similar and detailed researches can be extended to other area also.

  Key words: translation; English movie title; Memetics; domestication; foreignization

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

1. Introduction1

  1.1 Objectives of the Research.1

  1.2 The Significance of the Research.2

2. Literature Review.3

  2.1 A General Introduction to English Movie Titles3

  2.2 Previous Studies on English Movie Titles Translation6

3.Theoretical Framework.8

  3.1 Translation Strategies: Domestication and Foreignization8

    3.1.1 Definition of Domestication and Foreignization8

    3.1.2 Merits and Demerits of Domestication and Foreignization9

  3.2 Memetics11

    3.2.1 Memes.11

    3.2.2 Characteristics of Memetics and Its Limitation11

4. Memetics and English Movie Title Translation.12

  4.1 Transmission12

  4.2 Decoding13

  4.3 Infection.13

  4.4 Coding13

  5. Domestication and Foreignization in English Movie Title Translation From the Perspective of Memetics14

 5.1 Application of Domestication in English Movie Title Translation From the Perspective of Memetics14 

    5.2 Application of Foreignization in English Movie Title Translation From the Perspective of Memetics16

6. Conclusion.19

References21