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“grab a spoon” directly. However, the resulting translation is not reliable, because the
translator has used “勺子” (ladle) rather than “调羹”(spoon)。Ladles are large and deep
and are normally used to serve soup. This does not fit the context where Joey is talking
about ice cream. The audience does not know why Joey mentions a ladle here and will
feel confused. Hence, one can also say that the translation is not effective as the
association between a ladle and ice cream is remote. Chinese viewers do not have a CSI
which uses the expression of grabbing a spoon. In addition, they are not familiar with a
metaphor where choosing between different women is compared to choosing between
different flavours of ice cream.
My suggestion for the HPTE would be:
“挑你喜欢的冰激淋吃” which translates as “Just eat whatever ice cream you pick
up.” To achieve the HPTE, deletion is used as the strategy. In this context, grabbing the
spoon is not accessible to the audience, not only because spoon is polysemic and cannot
be translated easily but also because it is remotenot immediately associated with ice
cream in this context. Chinese viewers cannot draw a link between the spoon and the ice
cream. Nor can they understand that grabbing a spoon means picking up your favourite
ice cream or a woman randomly. The translator can extend the line to “grab a spoon and
eat whatever ice cream you like”, but this line will not be synchronised with the
character‟s statement. The original sentence is short and a long sentence would not
match the character‟s lip movements.
Yet another general cultural reference to is found in Season 1, Episode 4, Scene 12,
where Joey‟s Mum refers to Sting, when she says: “Look, honey, in an ideal world,
there would be no her, and your father would look like Sting. The Chinese subtitle reads:
“在一个理想的世界,应该不会有一个她,你父亲也长得象史汀一样帅” which means:
“Your father is as handsome as Sting.” The translator used repetition as the strategy. The
translator translated Sting directly, however the reliability of this translation is medium,
because Sting definitely has more qualities than his appearance to make people
remember him. The translation is not effective, because although Sting is a famous
musician in the USA, in China, his reputation is limited. The audience would not know
how handsome Sting is. This might not bother the audience much as this line is not
important in its context. However, the translator could have handled it more effectively.
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