On Domestication and Foreignization in Subtitle TranslationA Case Study of American TV Series the Big Bang Theory

In the era of the globalization of economic and cultural development, countries friendly communicate with each other and develop together. Mutual absorption and learning of the essence of culture or science and technology have become the inevitable trend. Under this circumstance, film and television shows have an indelible contribution to the dissemination of cultural knowledge. Accordingly, film subtitling and dubbing translation came into being. Subtitle translation, as a new branch of translation, although has a late start in China, has been developing rapidly in recent years. Subtitle translation not only can be said to be a kind of conversion of language, but a bridge between different cultures. This requires properly choosing effective translation strategies to achieve effective cross-language and cross-cultural conversion when the subtitles are translated. The two translation strategies domestication and foreignization which are the most basic translation strategies are frequently used. In this paper, film subtitling characteristics and the analyses of examples are combined, discussing the use and application of domestication and foreignization with the TV show The Big Bang Theory. Then, there comes a final conclusion- both domestication and foreignization have their own characteristics and advantages, which cannot bring out the best without the other one.