A Study On Subtitle Translation Of Mulan From The Perspective Of Script Theory

Film as a fashionable culture form is an efficient channel on transmitting culture. Foreign audiovisual translations continuously swarm into China with the fast development of culture exchange among different countries.More and more audiences have a strong desire to appreciate the original sound films, thus subtitle translation appear correspondingly and become one important branch of translation study. At present, researches in China both in theory and practice of subtitle translation lag behind western countries. So it is necessary to explore more and deeper on subtitle translation.Scholars from different schools give different definitions to script theory. According to Ungerer and Schmid, script is knowledge structure that is particularly designed for frequently recurring event sequences. It possesses two properties:open-endedness and interdependent. In a concrete situation, when an original script is activated, the sub-scripts of it will automatically be activated at the same time. When the situational context changes, the original script could adjust accordingly and generates new script which can be applied into situation simultaneously. The process of generating a new script by subtitlers is the process of cognition.Subtitle translation is restricted by time and space constraints which are the major differences from written translation. During subtitling, subtitlers need to have complete understanding of original text in order to make sure minimum loss of information in target language and make a correct assumption of target audiences'expectation by considering cultural discrepancy between the original and the target. For the sake of obtaining maximum information within time and space constraints by target audience, the subtitlers should employ appropriate translation strategies when subtitling. Script contributes to the subtitlers a lot on cognition. This paper bases on the script theory of cognitive linguistic mainly discusses how script theory applies in subtitle translation by analyzing examples from Mulan. Through discussion, the author attempts to discuss the explanatory power of script theory on subtitle translation and translation strategies and principles under the guideline of script theory.