A Study Of Subtitles Translation Of Desperate Housewives From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

As a special genre of translation, subtitles translation has aroused great interest and discussion of many scholars and audiences due to more and more cultural communication in globalization. Up to now, there has been no single comprehensive theory which can be used to guide the subtitles translation. Thus, there are many limitations on the study of it such as suggestions given based on translation experiences of some translators and the focus on the context-related study. This thesis takes the perspective of pragmatic translation and use the adaptation theory of Jef Verschueren in a macro pragmatic perspective to analyze the English-Chinese (E-C) subtitles translation of the American TV series Desperate Housewives. The purpose of the thesis is to provide some beneficial enlightenment to subtitle translators.The thesis aims to find some useful translation strategies for subtitle translators. Guided by Jef Verschueren's adaptation theory in pragmatics, a descriptive-explanatory method is adopted with case study of Desperate Housewives. The conclusion is that adaptation theory has great power in guiding and explaining subtitles translation. During the analysis, strategies in subtitle translation have been provided, for example, foreignization, paraphrasing, deletion, etc. Those strategies hopefully provide insight for subtitle translators in their translation.