Aphasia is a language disorder resulting from damage to brain areas that control language expression and reception. Clinically, the narrative production of Persons with Aphasia (PWA) provides valuable information for diagnosis of aphasia. There are several types of assessment procedures for analysis of aphasic's narrative production. One of them is to use quantification systems, such as the Cantonese Linguistic Communication Measure (CLCM; Kong & Law, 2004) or the Main Concept Analysis (MCA; Kong, 2009), for objective quantification of aphasic's discourse. The purposes of this study are (1) to translate the MCA and CLCM to a Taiwanese Mandarin Main Concept Analysis (TM-MCA) and a Taiwanese Mandarin Linguistic Communication Measure (TM-LCM), respectively, and (2) to validate them based on normal speakers and PWA in Taiwan. In the pilot study, a total of sixteen participants, eight certified speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and eight normal speakers, were invited to establish the Taiwanese Mandarin main concepts related to the four sets of sequencial pictures created by Kong in 2009. The language samples from eight normal speakers were then used to determine the informative words (i-words) in the picture sets. In the main study, thirty-six normal speakers and ten PWA were recruited to perform the same picture description tasks. The elicited language samples were analyzed using both the TM-MCA and TM-LCM. The results suggested that both age and education affected the oral discourse performance. Significant differences on the measures in TM-MCA and indices in TM-LCM were noted between the normal and aphasic groups. It was also found that overall aphasia severity affected the picture description performances of PWA. Finally, significant correlations between some of the TM-MCA measures and TM-LCM indices were noted. In conclusion, both the TM-MCA and TM-LCM are culturally appropriate to the Taiwanese Mandarin population. They can be used to supplement standardized aphasia tests to help clinicians make more informative decisions not only on diagnosis but also on a treatment plan of aphasia.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how the approaches identified for the translation of Taiwanese Mandarin dialogues into English subtitles is different from those described in research studies which examined the translation of English film dialogues into Mandarin subtitles using data gathered from a Taiwanese movie entitled Cape No. 7. Taiwanese Mandarin is significantly influenced by the Tai-yu dialect, and in order to carry out the translation of Taiwanese Mandarin, it is important to deal with the functions of the dialect and related culture-specific items (CSIs). Therefore, the researcher of this thesis has investigated whether the translator of Cape No. 7 successfully applied a variety of translation strategies and prioritized the translation criteria well, to enable the target audience to receive the same message of the film as the source audience, especially when subtitling is constrained by time and space. There are two research areas which have been examined: slang and humour. The data analysis of slang scenes included Tai-yu slang and swearing, while humorous scenes were divided into three areas: puns, irony and metaphor. The research data have been analysed by means of analysis diagrams, which were trialled in a pilot study, described in Chapter Three. The pilot study lead to a new categorization based on previous researchers’ taxonomies (Aixelá, 1996; Davies, 2003; Tveit and Fong 2005, as cited in Yang, 2006), and this was applied to the analysis diagrams. According to the findings from the analysis chapters (Chapter Four & Five), the translator of Cape No. 7 preferred to use mostly the paraphrasing strategy in translating Tai-yu slang and humour, and the synonymy strategy in conveying swearing. In addition, the translator often strengthened swear words rather than toning them down in the English subtitles. However, when subtitling humorous scenes, the translator preferred to incorporate two strategies to deal with the cultural barriers when conveying the humorous effect. The compensation strategy was not used often in slang translation. In regard to the translation criteria, pragmatics and accuracy appeared to have been deemed more important by the translator than other criteria. Surprisingly functional equivalence did not seem to have been the translator’s first priority, as suggested by earlier research. Overall, this research study appeared to show that the translator of Cape No. 7 considered the paraphrase strategy to be the most efficient strategy for maintaining CSIs, and that pragmatics and accuracy were the translator’s most important criteria, which differs from the findings of previous research studies.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how the approaches identified for the translation of Taiwanese Mandarin dialogues into English subtitles is different from those described in research studies which examined the translation of English film dialogues into Mandarin subtitles using data gathered from a Taiwanese movie entitled Cape No. 7. Taiwanese Mandarin is significantly influenced by the Tai-yu dialect, and in order to carry out the translation of Taiwanese Mandarin, it is important to deal with the functions of the dialect and related culture-specific items (CSIs). Therefore, the researcher of this thesis has investigated whether the translator of Cape No. 7 successfully applied a variety of translation strategies and prioritized the translation criteria well, to enable the target audience to receive the same message of the film as the source audience, especially when subtitling is constrained by time and space. There are two research areas which have been examined: slang and humour. The data analysis of slang scenes included Tai-yu slang and swearing, while humorous scenes were divided into three areas: puns, irony and metaphor. The research data have been analysed by means of analysis diagrams, which were trialled in a pilot study, described in Chapter Three. The pilot study lead to a new categorization based on previous researchers’ taxonomies (Aixelá, 1996; Davies, 2003; Tveit and Fong 2005, as cited in Yang, 2006), and this was applied to the analysis diagrams. According to the findings from the analysis chapters (Chapter Four & Five), the translator of Cape No. 7 preferred to use mostly the paraphrasing strategy in translating Tai-yu slang and humour, and the synonymy strategy in conveying swearing. In addition, the translator often strengthened swear words rather than toning them down in the English subtitles. However, when subtitling humorous scenes, the translator preferred to incorporate two strategies to deal with the cultural barriers when conveying the humorous effect. The compensation strategy was not used often in slang translation. In regard to the translation criteria, pragmatics and accuracy appeared to have been deemed more important by the translator than other criteria. Surprisingly functional equivalence did not seem to have been the translator’s first priority, as suggested by earlier research. Overall, this research study appeared to show that the translator of Cape No. 7 considered the paraphrase strategy to be the most efficient strategy for maintaining CSIs, and that pragmatics and accuracy were the translator’s most important criteria, which differs from the findings of previous research studies.

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本論文觀察台灣地區國語閩南口音，也就是俗稱的「台灣國語」中展現的單元音化以及擦音卸解現象，建立「台灣國語語料庫」作為本論文分析的基礎，並且從優選理論的觀點探討這些台灣國語音韻現象。 根據「台灣國語語料庫」的數據顯示，韻核後介音 /j/ 以及 /w/ 容易被語者刪除，韻核前介音 /j/ 以及 /w/ 則傾向被語者保留。輕擦音 /f/ 在台灣國語中常被卸解為 /hw/。 本文的分析認為，國語閩南口音是一種方言的變異，反映了閩南語以及國語的部份制約排序。當語者表現出明顯的閩南語口音時，反映出閩南語的部份制約排序；而語者的閩南語口音較不明顯時，則反映了國語的部份制約排序。 / This thesis investigates monophthongization and fricative reconfiguration in the Taiwanese Accent of Mandarin (TM), and establishes the TM corpus as the base of phonological analysis. The Optimality Theory approach is adopted to account for the phonological phenomenon of TM. As indicated by the TM corpus, the postnuclear glides /j/ and /w/ tend to be deleted in TM; the prenuclear glides /j/ and /w/ tend to be preserved in TM; and the fricative /f/ tend to reconfigurate as /hw/ in TM. Our analysis considers that TM is a dialectal variation which reflects the subgrammars of Taiwanese and Mandarin. When the speaker shows a clear Taiwanese accent, the partially ordered ranking of Taiwanese is reflected; and when the speaker shows no obvious Taiwanese accent, the partially ordered ranking of Mandarin is reflected.