4.1.1 Linguistic Features 8

4.1.2 Artistic Features 8

4.1.3 Commercial Features 9

4.2 Strategies of American TV Series Title Translation 9

4.2.1 Literal Translation 9

4.2.2 Amplification and Omission 9

4.2.3 Free Translation 10

5.  Conclusion 10

5.1 Findings of the Research 10

5.2 Limitations and Suggestion 11

Acknowledgements 12

Bibliography 13 

1.  Introduction

1.1 Research Background

American TV series is a type of culture product that deeply reflect the values and ideology of America. With the development of media technology and cross-culture communication between China and America, exchange of television programs is becoming much more frequent. The translation of American TV series titles is usually acting as a guide that plays an important role in determining their popularity. There have been a lot of discussions about four-character structure and American TV series title translation, and it seems that there are more and more heated discussions at home and abroad, and the width and depth of these discussions would be wider and deeper. As we can see, a large number of titles are translated into the four-character structures, but few people have focused on the cultural elements behind such phenomenon. Thus, the prupose of this thesis is to study the four-character structure in the American TV series title translation, especially form a cultural perspective.

1.2 Research Methodology

This thesis mainly focuses on the phenomenon of four-character structure in the translation of American TV series through reviewing and analyzing the translation of American TV series titles in the past five years. And this thesis will adopt a descriptive and comparative approach to discuss the problem. A great number of examples will be cited in this thesis. And besides, a data analysis will also be adopted on the explanation of the features of American TV series titles. The comparison will be made between different versions of the same title.

1.3 Thesis Structure

This thesis consists of five parts:

The first part is introduction, which introduces research background, research methodology and the structure of this thesis. The second part is the literature review about four-character structure and American TV series title translation. The third part discusses cultures reflected in four-character structure titles. The fourth part is the general analysis of American TV series title translation, especially from aspects of features and strategies. In the end of this thesis, conclusions are drawn from the analysis and discussion.

2.  Literature Review

2.1 Definition and Advantages of Four-character Structure

In the past decades, many domestic scholars have paid much attention on the four-character structure. There are many perse research perspectives of this study. However, there is no specific standard definition of four-character structure. 

Generally speaking, four-character structure contains four Chinese characters while we cannot say that all four Chinese characters phrases are four-character structures. And the views of different scholars are pided. Broad definitions like Ma Guofan (马国凡，1987：3-4) who thought four-character structure is the unit formed by four syllables. However, Lv Shuxiang (吕叔湘，1984：33-50) thought idiomatic phrases with four syllables are identified as four-character structure, and the scope is obviously more narrowed. Over the past few decades, the understanding of the concept of four-character structure has been gradually mature while research methods have been more comprehensive. The study objects are continuously being expanded into a wider range, from literature text to all kinds of pragmatic text.