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elationships. Three important comments need to be made about the series, the
translators and the Chinese viewers. Firstly, although this series is a sitcom and taken as
such by American audiences, it seems likely that Chinese viewers will take the series to
be a true reflection of life in the USA and that they will take what they see onscreen
quite seriously. Secondly, it should be added that not much information is available
about the translators, in terms of whether there was one or more translator at work,
however, it is quite normal for translation work of this nature to be carried out by a
group of translators. Equally, not much is known about the characteristics of the
audience, however, the researcher worked on the assumption that they would
predominantly be young viewers in the 20-35 year old age group.
3.4 Design and data selection
The design of the study involved selection of suitable scenes, transcription of original
spoken discourse and analysis of the same, followed by transcription, back translation
and analysis of the subtitle translation in terms of the various criteria outlined by
Ivarsson and Carroll (1998). The translation taxonomy outlined by Aixelá (1996) was
then used to categorise the translation strategy followed by the subtitle translator.
Finally, a High Probability Translation Equivalent (HPTE) was suggested by the
researcher drawing on Nida‟s definition of „dynamic equivalence‟ (1969) and
Newmark‟s definition of the „communicative‟ approach to translation (1982). This
HPTE was transcribed, analysed and classified in terms of the same criteria. This
double-pronged approach was aimed to provide optimal information about the original
strategy followed and whether any other strategy could have been used to render the
translation more effective in terms of the translation criteria outlined. The next section
will describe the data selection and analysis in detail.
3.5 Instruments
The research instruments for this thesis were mainly qualitative and involved an
analysis of subtitles which was based on the work of AVT and screen translation
theories (e.g. Ivarsson & Carroll, 1998) and the work of researchers in the area of CSI
translation (e.g. Aixelá, 1996). Research instruments also involved a back translation
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