Audiovisual Translation Within The Framework Of Adaptation Theory

Despite the pervasive practice and profound influence of audiovisual translation in our society, academic research in this particular field is still far from satisfaction. To a certain extent, this undesirable situation has hindered the development of audiovisual translation and the whole audiovisual industry as well. With the famous TV series Desperate Housewives as a case study, this thesis attempts to give a tentative exploration on audiovisual translation within the framework of adaptation theory proposed by Verschueren.According to Verschueren, language using is a process of continuous choice making with different degrees of salience. The possibility of this choice making lies in the three properties of language:variability, negotiability, and adaptability. And any process of language use is taken as dynamic adaptation in light of contextual correlates and structural objects. Inspired by adaptation theory, this thesis sets up a pragmatic perspective for the investigation of the audiovisual translator's language use and suggests audiovisual translation as realization of adaptation. The objects of adaptation are divided into two large categories:linguistic adaptation and extra-linguistic adaptation. During the process of audiovisual translation, the translator needs to take various factors into consideration:First, in terms of linguistic adaptation, the special features of audiovisual channels as well as the codes and styles of audiovisual text should be considered at first hand. Then, linguistic adaptation to the sound, syntactic, and cohesive structure are discussed respectively; Second, in terms of extra-linguistic adaptation, the author analyzes the participants involved in audiovisual translation which not only includes the translator, but also the source-text producer and the target audience. Based on understanding of their different roles, the author goes further to explore the adaptation to the mental, social and physical world during the process of audiovisual translation. Though the objects of adaptability have been divided into linguistic and extra-linguistic categories, it does not mean that the translator processes the information separately. It is the dynamic interaction of these two dimensions that influences the translator's comprehension and transformation of the source text in a constantly generated context. What's more, the translator's degree of salience should also be accounted for different renditions of the same source text.Through the above analysis, the thesis comes to a conclusion that the theory of adaptation develops an effective framework for audiovisual translation. It helps us to get a better understanding of the nature of audiovisual translation. With the contrastive analysis of different versions of Desperate Housewives from the perspective of adaptation theory, this thesis aims to be conductive to the practical audiovisual translation and helps to increase the quality of dubbing and subtitling.