Skopostheorie Approach To The Subtitle Translation Of Avatar

There are many translation styles in which the film subtitle translation is attaching more and more importance along with the development of globalization, because whether the subtitle translation of a foreign film is good or not will affect the film's reputation and the box office directly, and even affect cross-cultural communication through the media channels. However, looking at the field of subtitle translation, the guiding theories are not perfect and the quality of a great number of film subtitle translation remains to be further improved.In the paper, the author will use the German functionalist skopostheorie as the theory basis, and combine some guiding theories in the field of film subtitling, and then analyze and discuss the subtitle translation of a epochal film epic Avata. The author will dissertate from the following four parts:Firstly, the introduction is the first part. In this section, the author will focus on some of the previous studies on subtitle translation, defects of the subtitle translation and some serious problems in this field.Secondly, the author will introduce the basic information of the film epic "Avatar" which is the text that the theory attaches to, meanwhile, the significance selecting Avatar as the case study, that is, why is it chosen as the text.Then, in the third part of the paper, in this part, the author will discuss the main theory of this paper systematically, that is, the skopostheorie of the German functionalist school. Throughout the history of the development of translation theory, German functionalism skopostheorie occupies a pivotal position. In 1970s of the 20th century, German functionalism skopostheorie was put forward by some German scholars. Skopostheorie opens a new angle of view of the translation study under the circumstances of cross-culture. In 1971, Katharina·Reiss proposed the rudiment of the functionalist theory--text typology in the book Possibilities and Limitations in Translation Criticism. Reiss presented functional categories in this book, creating a translation criticism model based on the functional relationship of the source text and the target text. Since then, in 1978, based on Theory of Action, Reiss's student Hans·Vermeer got rid of the equivalence theory whose center is original text, and the basic theory of the functionalism school----skopostheorie was put forward for the first time in the book Common Framework of Translation Theory. According to the analysis of Vermeer, translation may have three purposes:the translators'basic purpose during the process of translation; the communicative purpose of the translation version under the target language environment; and the purpose of the use of a particular translation strategy or translation process. However, in general, the purpose refers to the communicative purpose. Furthermore, Justa·Holz·Manttari developed the functionalist translation theory. She proposed Theory of Translation Action. She used message transmitters to refer to a variety of cross-cultural transformation, and she considered translation as a complex activity to realize certain purpose. The later successor of skopostheorie, Reiss's student, Christiane·Nord cleared up and summarized a variety of academic thinking of functionalist school in the book Translating as a Purposeful Activity published in 1997. For some deficiencies, Nord proposed the principle of "function plus loyalty". As the supplement of skopostheorie, the principle of "function plus loyalty" requires that the translators should be responsible for all the participants in the translation process during the translation activities, and requires that the translators should try to coordinate the relationship among the parties. The principle of "function plus loyalty"makes the functionalist theory tend to be perfect. In a word, German functionalist skopostheorie liberate translation from the source language fetters; interpret translation activity from the new perspective of the target language, and bring a new revolution to translation theory field.The fourth part is the core of the paper. The author firstly analyzes the characteristics and principles of subtitle translation, review general strategies of subtitle translation, and then try to analysis film subtitle translation strategies from the point of view of the German functionalist skopostheorie. Furthermore, it is the application and analysis of skopostheorie in the translation of Avatar. In other words, it is the concrete combination of the theory and the text, and then some representative cases will be analyzed and discussed.Finally, the author makes a summary. In this paper, Avatar is applied as the study case and German functionalist skopostheorie is applied as the theoretical framework, the author searches and analyzes the subtitle translation of Avatar from the perspectives of the text, the translation function, the behavior and purpose of translation, translation strategies and so on. The author analyzes the feasibility using skopostheorie to guide the subtitle translation, because skopostheorie takes the characteristics and principles of film subtitle into account, and then provides the appropriate subtitle translation strategies for different movie subtitle translation. It has been proved that in the process of translation, the translator should take proper translation methods and translation strategies based on different styles and purposes of different texts to achieve the effect in accordance with intended purpose.