earticle

영어

This paper explores how culture-bound terms are translated in fansubs in comparison with conventional audio-visual translations. To do this, translations of TED talks performed by TED Open Translation Project participants were compared with those by professional translators of EBS, a state-owned broadcasting company in Korea. The two translation agencies –namely TED translators and professional EBS translators- used different strategies for different types of culture-bound terms. For units of measurement, EBS translators domesticated all the words while TED translators used combination strategies. Borrowing, literal translation, and borrowing+explanation were common for proper nouns, but EBS used chunking sideways while TED used the 'borrowing+(explanation)' strategy. Regarding general cultural terms, TED translators preferred literal translation while EBS used the free translation strategy more often. However, when it came to metaphors, surprisingly, TED translators used the free translation strategy more often than EBS did. This presents a stark contrast to the known features of fan subtitling ― literal translation and foreignization. This indicates that netizens are differentiating their strategies according to the skopos of their translation.