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2.8 Summary
This chapter has reviewed the general differences between the Chinese culture and
the American culture, the four major standards against which a subtitle is considered as
successful and the strategies that can be used in dealing with CSIs. The chapter has also
given a general introduction to the field of translation with a particular focus on subtitle
translation and the area of Culture Specific Items. The chapter has outlined some known
taxonomies of approaches to the translation of CSIs. A review of these theories is
important to the direction of the research as it shows what criteria can be considered in
measuring the strategies used by subtitle producers in handling CSIs that appear in
US-made operas. This chapter has also identified a gap in the literature in that no study
to date has combined Hofstede‟s (1973) use of the four benchmarks for describing
cultural differences with the translation taxonomy proposed by Davies (2003) The next
chapter will introduce the methodology used in the research study in more detail and
will provide a detailed description for the analysis method used and the rationale for the
same.
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