新加坡口语中实词与虚词的翻译策略——以《新兵正传》为例=THE TRANSLATION STRATEGIES OF SINGLISH WORDS TO CHINESE: A CASE STUDY OF “AH BOYS TO MEN”

Abstract

There are studies of Singlish, but there are few studies on how Singlish is translated. Singlish is an important part of Singapore’s culture, with it being used by most Singaporeans every day. However, Singlish may not be understood by foreigners and it builds a gap between Singaporeans and foreigners.

Thus, this thesis aims to study how Singlish words are translated into Chinese, hoping to reduce the gap between Singaporeans and foreigners through translation. Using the movie series “Ah Boys to Men” as a case study, Singlish words in the movie are split into different categories of content words and empty words, a Chinese grammar concept, as Mandarin and its dialects have largely influenced Singlish. The Singlish words and its corresponding Chinese subtitles are then matched with Liu’s translation strategies. Comparison and discussion would be done based on Singlish content words and empty words.

This thesis starts with an introduction on Singlish, followed by a literature review on content and empty words and another literature review on translation strategies. Afterwards, there is an explanation on the research methodology, followed by the results and discussion, and lastly conclusion.