Keywords

1 Introduction

During the past centuries, studies of the relations between language and society as well as culture have coalesced to form the fields of academic research known as linguistics in directions, literature, and interculturality and so on. The primary motivation for language study was to interpret the forms and practices of languages in generations under their evolutions, which was earlier aware of in western societies than that in eastern countries. In passing from Greece, western countries entered a very different world [1]. Those who consciously delve into the history of their subject began to study and form a new science in linguistics.

With the acceleration of globalization and the frequency of intercultural communication, policies accepting multilingualism and any kind of cultural pluralism started to be in existence for much of the late 19th century, replacing monolingualism. Therefore, linguistic investigations in multilingual countries are indispensable since political decisions are frequently based on regional linguistic situations [2].

In the late 20th century, Jürgen Habermas, one of the most influential sociological thinkers of the modern age, critically established the theory of communicative action by virtue of the linguistic turn in Western philosophy. His theory refers to “communicative actions are taken place by means of language signs following the validity claims between subjects, trying to achieve inter-subject understandings and agreements and thus embodying common ground, coordination and cooperation” [3]. Lawrence Venuti, an American scholar who has devoted himself to deconstructionist translation theory, proposed an idea of “A good translation is about using the target language to produce foreignizing effect of the source text [4]”. As translation and interpretation are interactive operations having effects on both the source and target languages, it is sensible to study the transformation of languages in directions such as sentence pattern transformation.

In this paper, the author proves the impossibility of subtitle translation under the help, or income cases, the interruption of computer-aided translation tools. The author considers translation act needs creativity and inspiration, which require language awareness. However, machines and artificial intelligence are currently not capable of considering and processing languages as great as human brains.

The author introduces subject migration, a new method, to illustrate how human translators think of source texts and output exquisite target texts to wholly transfer the ideas, attitudes, and inner activities of the source. Subject migration refers to the combination of translatology and syntax. Previous on the two areas, scholars have found difficulties of sentence structures between English and Chinese, and how to do a quick job by using intelligent tools such as CAT or Trados. In the current study, more support on human-brain translation is introduced and explained.

2 Subject Migration

2.1 Definition of Subject Migration

Subject migration refers to one translation principle that changes the origin subject of a translated text or sentence into another constituent in the target text or sentence. Three modes from the method including subject appearance, subject disappearance, and subject transference, are performing their distinctive functions based on the author’s classification.

Subject migration has been wildly put into use in various types of translation, yet few scholars define it and conduct a deeper study on it. Translation is an empirical discipline, of which practice is always precedes theory. By a large number of translating, practical translation methods can be summarized [5]. Subject migration starts exactly from practice and generates useful ways. Flexibility is expected in translations under this principle. Therefore, American sitcoms are picked as the perfect cases since the translation of a play or dialogues requires more creativity than the translation of documents and written texts. As a result, the author chooses the Big Bang Theory to study how subject migration perfects its comedy through English-Chinese translation.

Some Chinese scholars have compared the pros and cons of various subtitle translation groups, and expressed their appreciation for the YYeTs. Hei Yi [6] mentioned in his paper, saying that RRYS was a famous video site that its translation version deserved to be selected to analyze the characteristics of American sitcoms. Zhang Ziye wrote in her paper that the localization and buzzwords processing of YYeTs can meet the needs of Chinese audiences [7]. Therefore, the cases about subject migration with related analysis are going to present in this paper, and the version of RRYS. TV translated by YYeTs is selected for its large audience and years of expert experience.

2.2 Translation Formulas of Subject Migration

Subject migration is classified into three modes. All the origin texts and sentences translated under the guidance of this principle would lose their subjects or gain new ones. First, the principle of subject appearance is applied if the origin text has no subject but the target text is added. A translator may add a personal pronoun, which is usually the speaker or the listener, to lead the target sentence as its subject when translating an imperative sentence. Second, the principle of subject disappearance is used if the origin text has the subject yet the target text omits it, in that the translator always find it unnecessary to be maintained. Third, the principle of subject transference is adopted when the subject of origin text is transferred to another constituent of the target text. When it occurs, the translator is probably trying to smooth the targets in accordance with the idiomatic ways to speak Chinese.

On the basis of the above principles, the translation formulas are designed as follows:

Translation appearance

$$ Verb_{x} \left( { + \, Object_{x} } \right) \to Subject_{new} + Verb_{y} \left( { + \, Object_{y} } \right) $$
(1)

(x is not necessarily the same as y)

Translation disappearance

$$ Subject \, + \, Verb \, + \, Object \, \to \, Verb \, + \, Object $$
(2)

Translation transference

$$ Part_{m} + \, Verb_{s} + \, Part_{n} \to \, Part\hbox{-}_{n} + \, Verb_{t} + Part_{m} $$
(3)

(Verb t is usually the passive form of Verb s )

3 Subject Migrations in the Big Bang Theory

The research assistants of the author counted the fragments in 12 seasons of the Big Bang Theory which were translated under the principle of subject migration. The record is as shown in Table 1:

Table 1. Total amounts of target sentences translated by the principle of subject migration
Full size table

As a matter of fact, the numbers above cannot be too relied on since the different habits of translators’ Chinese expressions and the uncertainty of whether full 12 seasons were translated by the same translator. Diversified scenes, different plots and kinds of tones also required more freedom when choosing translation methods. Language services represent “a way to deal with an unsolved communication problem by providing a translator or interpreter” [8].

Nevertheless, it is easy to get that according to the records, the total number of sentences by subject appearance accounts for the least among the three, and the total number of sentences by subject transference accounts for the most, though, the numbers of sentences translated by subject disappearance may surpass the what about subject transference in some seasons.

4 Subject Migration Driven by Cultures with Examples

Culture and translation are mutually integrated. Translation is a tool for communication, and culture is the target. It means talking about translation is talking about culture [9]. It is evidently that Chinese would like to omit or add a subject when carrying out unofficial conversations. Here are some examples selected from the Big Bang Theory to better illustrate how subject migration helps for a better translation.

4.1 Subject Appearance

In S12E1 (Season 12 Episode 1), Amy’s father tried to evade her mother’s control that he hid in Amy’s apartment when Amy and her husband Sheldon were on their honeymoon. When he was caught by Penny, he wanted to get away as soon as possible, so he said “Have a good day.” Usually, these words equal “Goodbye.” or “Have fun.” when someone is leaving others. However, the translator translated it into “Zai Xia Gao Ci”. “Zai Xia” is the Chinese “I”, and “Gao Ci” means “see you later”. The translator translated it according to the scene that he/she realized the character was emphasizing his act to escape from the awkward talk, and of course the speaker was the most awkward person at that time. Hence, subject appearance was adopted.

There is a pair of relative concepts, namely “process orientation” and “result orientation”. Researchers believe that when describing the same event, “process orientation” may express its meaning later than what “result orientation” do more often. However, it is realized that American tends to express their ideas in a process-orientation way. In one episode, three of the four male scientists were chatting something hotly, and the fourth man would like to join them. So he said “Just for the record” and went on. The words “Just for the record” was translated into “Wo Cha Yi Jv” by one Chinese translator. “Wo” means “I” and “Cha Yi Jv” means “interrupt”. The translator realized that the speaker really wanted to talk something to his friends, and based on his/her Chinese way of thinking and speaking, he/she add a subject to emphasize the sense of presence of the fourth guy.

4.2 Subject Disappearance

Subject disappearance is usually found in a sentence pattern “I think…”, “I suppose…”, “I’m sure…”, etc. When translating these sentences into Chinese, “I” is often omitted because the translator knows the speaker does not play the decisive role. For example, in S4E6, the translator translated “I don’t think we’re going to do that” into “Wo Men Cai Bu Hui Wan Na Ge” (“Wo Men” means “we”). In this case, “I” is abandoned yet “don’ t think” is kept and translated and put after “we”, informing the audiences that the subordinate clause of the source sentence matters most.

Complex sentences with main clauses such as “I (don’ t) think…”, “I am + adj. (like: sorry)…”, “I’m (not) sure…”, “I (don’t) believe…”, “I admit…” which are with personal moods, thoughts or mental states of the speaker are often translated by omitting the old subject. It is because these words that seemed to express the speaker’s attitude or condition are actually not playing a crucial role.

4.3 Subject Transference

Addition is a useful way of translation, trying to use more words to illustrate what the source text would like to express. When translating dialogues through adopting the method of “subject transference”, the translators prefer to put the original subject in the source text to the other part in the target text and change another part into the new subject. It is common and suitable that Chinese use “S + V + O (subject + verb + object)” when generating dialogues or writing texts. However, people in English tend to use passive voice more frequently. Therefore, subject transference is quite practical.

In the first episode of the seventh season of the Big Bang Theory (S07E01), Sheldon and Penny were sharing their secrets. After Sheldon told Penny his secret, Penny thought it worthless, and showed her indifferent attitude, which annoyed Sheldon a lot. As a result, Penny apologized for her bad behavior, and Shelton replied as “Your apology is accepted” which was translated by the Chinese translator as “Wo Jie Shou Ni De Dao Qian”. The translator is supposed to care for the audiences’ expectations, and the audiences’ needs and acceptance level must be considered and solved by using various methods to minimize the cognitive load caused by the source language culture [10].

5 Computer Translation

5.1 Status of Computer Translation

In recent years, new approaches have been developed to enhance the translation efficiency. Advanced technologies allow all the people including translators, global literature readers and foreign show and opera enthusiasts to translate what they would like to know. The author combines her idea and the previous research and study of translation area, creating the following chart to introduce the current ways of translation:

As shown in the Fig. 1, computer translation has taken a great part in the whole translation industry. Many professional translators nowadays even use some softwares or intelligent tools to conduct full or semi computer translation without reading and understanding the text carefully since they realize translation may not be a permanent job anymore, which is unacceptable and deserves punishment by the industry or the related associations. Yet few people cares about it, because they think artificial intelligence will finally take over some of our humans work, and translation is inevitably included.

5.2 Comparisons of Human and Computer Translations

In this paper, the author introduced subject migration to show the capability of human beings on languages. It is convinced that computer can complete a rather faster and higher-efficient work. Yet it can never process as great as people especially what for sitcoms since it has no language awareness and consciousness. Machines and all intelligent tools can have and absorb knowledge within a short time. However, they never understood and will never be able to fully understand these “food” under the situation of without real human brains. The following table is a comparison of human translation by using the method of subject migraion, which is selected from the Big Bang Theory, and computer translation of the same source text:

Two translations are shown as Table 2:

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Classification of current ways of translation

Full size image
Table 2. Translation example by using subject migration
Full size table

This piece of dialogue comes from Episode 11 of Season 6 in the Big Bang Theory, the speaker of this sentence wanted her neighbors to know they were missing some attractive things, but some of the neighbors just wanted to play a fictitious adventure game. In the human translation, it is noticed that subject migration was applied since the unnecessary subjects “I” s were eliminated. The translator realized that the speaker was not important in this piece of dialogue, thus changing its structure. However, computer cannot watch this, and it even cannot realize the “you” s in the sentence is a plural, so it translates “your” as “Ni De” and “you” as “Ni” (in Chinese, “Ni” means singular “you”, “Men” means plural things, and “DE” refers to a kind of owner-member relationship).

It is well known that operas and shows always use simple words to express unless there are some information needs to be explained by terms of certain professions. Therefore, opera translation especially sitcom translation is somehow easy to accomplish. Translators have no need to use intelligent translation tools, and if they use, more misunderstandings and uncomfortable feels from audiences might be found.

5.3 Opinions of Computer Translation

Some scholars believed that the emergence of translation software has greatly improved the translation efficiency. The most indispensable parts in such software in the translation industry are Translation memory and Term base. SDL Trados and CAT, the most popular translation software in the world, are used by individuals and companies. The principle of Translation memory technology from the software is that translators store the existing original text and source text in an unnamed folder with a special format. Then they use the computer-aid translation software system to accurately find out translated or similar sentences and vocabularies to avoid them from doing repetitive and meaningless work. Term base has an as significant as Translation memory has impact on translation work. Since Term base is convenient and quick for query professional words and expressions, and new terms can be timely supplied to prevent term confusion, the translator’s work can be sped up and the quality can be improved. However, to cope with specialized terms, translation software can only provide existing data as a reference, without the capability of offering correct results. Also, translators must look up specialized dictionaries, papers, or documents in certain areas to check their work.

There is another kind of translation software such as Google Translation and Baidu Translation which are able to directly provide correct word or text translation within short time. These translation tools assist readers who are not proficient in foreign languages to understand the article they are trying to get, and is often applied in scientific and technological translations. Nowadays, translators tend to use intelligent translation tools as their first step, and then modify the results from computer to smooth sentences and to make sense the structures. However, due to subtitle translation is rather special, of which dialogue or psychological activities have different interpretations with the development of plots, the same sentence may show different tones from different speakers in different scenes. Therefore, such tasks are never supposed to produce the same result, which is definitely not able to be recognized and distinguished by a computer. A computer owns high-speed work ability. Yet human’s emotion and comprehension ability are still unique. The two things are mutually restricted when translating, which makes it impossible for translators to completely rely on computer aided translation on subtitles. No matter how the information age develops, subtitle translation will be never too accurate if computers cannot sense feels and tones of characters as great as human. In other words, subtitle translation varied and will still vary from persons.

Due to the complicated process of China’s import of foreign films and TV operas, many enthusiasts of them have joined the team to translate subtitles. However, their translation literacy and translation ability are not good enough, thus causing some mistakes occasionally. It is very important for any translator to lay his or her foundation of translating, abide by translation principles, improve translation skills, and find suitable translation method with his or her own characteristic through large quantities of subtitle translation activities. Translation can never be seen as an assembly line work. Translation is a kind of art that needs creativity and deserves unlimited possibilities. For translators who devoted themselves to subtitle translation, it is critical to create personal Term base and Translation memory. By establishing these, translators can have a general review of their past works, which helps to cultivate their own clear translation style. Subject migration, for example, is certainly one of the translation methods that cannot be realized by computers. It is clear that each piece of scripts has its own style. Hence, translators are supposed to solely translate tasks of a sort, such as comedy. Through this, translators can better understand sense of humor, and eventually become an excellent translator.

6 Conclusion

Subject migration is a relatively new translation method, of which the three modes were separately introduced in this paper and relevant formulas were designed. Also, cases of subject migration from the Big Bang Theory were analyzed, stating a viewpoint that subject migration is playing a key role in cross-culture translation. Moreover, this translation method as well as other theories is not popular in computer aided translation since artificial intelligence is not real brain an cannot feel as well as what humans do. Therefore, subtitle translation is not expected to conduct under the guidance of intelligent translation tools.

This study is supposed to flourish English language and literature study in aspects such as translation studies and sociolinguistics to a certain extent. I looks forward to generating new ideas for English learners, researchers and translators to deal with multicultural contents in a better way.