A Study On Rewriting Phenomena In E-C Film Subtitle Translation From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

With the deepening of globalization, the cultural communication between Chinaand the west become more and more frequent. As one of the most powerful ways ofcultural transmission, audiovisual products functions more actively on China’s bigscreen. Therefore, audiovisual products translation has became an important field inthe translation studies. The film Inception was shown on the screen in July,2010, byWarner Bros., and was imported in China in September,2010. It hits an impressivebox-office sale of$825532764worldwide with$68445823in China. In the sameyear, the film captured eight nominations including four wins in the83rdAcademicAwards or Oscar.In the1980s, Lefevere proposed the concept of rewriting and the rewritingtheory, which changed scholars’ view of translation and their translation studypatterns. It changes scholars’ translation view and translation study patterns. Thistheory shifts the translation focus from analyzing the original text to describing andexplaining the translated text, with considering more factors, like cultural context,historical context, and social context, in and outside the literature system. By now,there are a few studies focused on and discussed how rewriting theory guide thetranslation practice. The results are still about abstract and macroscopically guidance,not specific and operable regularities that can be applied in translation practice.Therefore, this thesis studied the rewriting phenomena in E-C film subtitletranslation from the perspective of rewriting theory with a case study of Inception.Efforts are made to detect specific and operable regularities from the occurrences ofthe rewriting phenomena.This thesis tries to find answers of two questions:(1) what major types ofrewriting phenomena can be discovered in the E-C translation of the subtitles of thefilm Inception?(2) What regularities can be ratiocinated from the occurrences ofrewriting based on the above descriptions?Through observation, the rewriting phenomena in Inception are divided intothree major types, i.e. rewriting at lexical, sentence, and discourse level. Afterdescription and explanation of their subtypes, major findings are:(1) rewritingphenomena are mainly occur at the lexical and sentence level by the forms ofmeaning changing, meaning weakening, meaning omitting and meaning enriching,and structure rearranging, sentence omitting and sentence meaning changing. Theyare usually constrained by the target audience’s reception and preference;(2) at discourse level, the form of changing sentence meaning will be employed if the firstform, changing sentence structure won’t solve the target audiences’ understandingdifficulties. In this form, it partially or completely drops the original meaning, andrewrites according to contexts to accomplish the duty of pushing forward scenario.(3) at both lexical and sentence level, subtitles are usually rewritten in two aspects,i.e. structure changing at the surface level and meaning changing at the deep level;five forms commonly used are: combining, adding, reducing, weakening andomitting.This thesis studied the translated text, translation procedures, translators, andthe tendency of translation methods’ usage. The whole process of the study helps toanalyze the hidden factors in translating, improves the understanding of translationfor translators, and guides translation practice better.