This doctoral dissertation aims to analyse the translation of cultural references in Spanish and French films into Japanese and English, from the cognitive and semiotic point of view. That is, to analyse how the viewer receives the cultural elements through the Spanish and French films and in what way he/she interprets the meaning and the cultural sense through the subtitles.
The Spanish film that will be used as an example is Belle époque (1997) and the French one is Laissez- Passer (2002). Both films concern a similar period, between 1930 to 1945. At that time, Spain was suffering from the Spanish Civil War and France was also occupied by the German military during World War II. The two films, which are set in almost the same period show us many cultural elements not only in the textual form but also visually, thus, the viewer consciously and unconsciously receives various cultural elements in different ways. In order to define it from the semiotic point of view, I will (1) elaborate the most adequate semiotic theoretical framework for this research and (2) use the theoretical framework of translation and cultural studies. The need to apply these theoretical frameworks from two different fields arises from the necessity to verify that translation studies and semiotic studies share a common focus, especially when the original language and the target language are very different, as in the combination of language:(Spanish-Japanese) and (French-Japanese).
Taking these frameworks as the fundamental axes, the analysis takes the form of the comparative and descriptive method. To identify the transference of cultural elements from the semiotic point of view, from two European languages into Japanese, we need to classify the culture references according to the social and cultural subject area, in fact, this classification makes it possible to see clear results and tendencies.
This research involves four languages; Spanish, French, English, and Japanese, and the theoretical framework also covers several fields: Semiotic, Translation Studies, and Cultural Studies. That is, one side has far more sociological and philosophical aspects, the other is a very pragmatic aspect, technical points in translation. Thus, this research shows that the semiotic focus gives us a very intellectually valid and logical explanation of our cognitive system and also gives a useful technical solution to the translation between two, linguistically and culturally, very different languages.
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