3.5.3 Transfer
It could be argued that the preferred objective for translation strategies is to ensure that the sentence meaning is not lost nor changed in translation.According to Gottlieb,the strategy of “transfer” is needed to completely and correctly explain the source text through the target language by deploying similar or equivalent expressions common to both languages.Furthermore,this strategy is more often used in cognate languages,e.g.,English and most of European languages all belong to the Indo-European family of languages.As such it should not generally be suitable for use in E-C translation given that they belong to two different language families and therefore may not have a close relationship to,or much in common with,expressions used in the original film.
In the sample,however,we can observe 111 out of 930 subtitles that are translated by this method.For instance:
This high number of instances using the strategy of transfer can be explained by the characteristics of cartoon films.The expected audiences for these films are mainly children,young people and their parents.As a result,the strategy of transfer is applicable to some degree because of the expected audiences’ relevant reading age,and educational background as well as the content of the film itself.In turn,translators can deploy literal translation or find equivalence between the English original and Chinese subtitles.
The strategy of transfer can be explained by the characteristics of animation films.The expected audiences for these films are mainly children,young people and their parents.As a result,the strategy of transfer is applicable to some degree because of the expected audiences’ relevant reading age,and educational background as well as the content of the film itself.In turn,translators can deploy literal translation or find equivalence between the original English text and the Chinese subtitles.(https://www.daowen.com)
The strategy of “transfer” is also applicable to the translation of characters’ names，although this approach is slightly out of date in modern E-C translating.For example，the girl’s name “Rose” is equal to the Chinese “玫瑰”，which is a better translation than that of the similarly pronounced name “罗斯”，because “rose” and “玫瑰” refer to the same kind of beautiful flower and underlines the wishful intent of the girl’s parents to their daughter.On the other hand，“罗斯” has no such meaningful implication.This is a widely used method when translating names of persons according to Dang （1996） and Wang （2012）.
Sometimes,the original English has a clear cultural connotation:
00:21:24,492 to 00:21:29,332
The highest honour awarded to Dr.Nefario (Original subtitle)
向那法利尔博士致以最崇高的敬意（Released translation）
In this example，the subtitler uses the strategy of imitation by choosing corresponding homophonous Chinese characters.This is a traditional translation method in the history of E-C translation.In order to reveal the meaning of the original name，the researcher suggests that this name is translated by imitating the indicated meaning of the original given that，compared with imitating the pronunciation of the name，conveying the indicated meaning is more helpful to the audience in comprehension of the film.In the name “Dr.Nefario”，“Nefario” refers to “nefarious” or evil.Therefore，it is better to translate this to “黑博士” which means “Dr.Black” （black is a colour but also implies evil in Chinese culture.This strategy involves imitation，which keeps the original meaning by using a similar expression in Chinese.