Exploring English-Chinese Audiovisual Translation

Though audiovisual culture was born in the west, it was also well developed in China. Over the past years of reform and opening up, with the Chinese government attaching growing attention to it, audiovisual culture has held a very important position in the cultural exchanges with foreign countries. Nowadays more and more foreign movies and TV plays are showed on our screen, which has resulted in a new translation area-audiovisual translation. And this trend will surely be reinforced in the future with the deepening of China's reform and opening-up.Comparatively speaking, audiovisual translation is less studied both at home and abroad. Fewer books and articles have touched this specific area -English-Chinese (E-C) audiovisual translation. In the Chinese Translators Journal published in the past decade, just three articles are found to deal with this issue. Though several translators have proposed some theories of E-C audiovisual translation, the research so far is neither systematic nor comprehensive. In order to fill this gap, this thesis is intended to study E-C audiovisual translation from a cultural perspective and tries to establish a new set of principles that can be used to guide the practice. The theory of "cultural turn" in translation studies and reception theory are adopted as the theoretical basis of the present study. Giving a keen observation of its specialties, this thesis tries to examine E-C audiovisual translation in the specific socio-cultural context and take an audience-oriented approach to the study. Its focus is only on the study of translation of English films and TV plays into Chinese due to limited space.The thesis holds that audiovisual products are not only carriers of culture, but also integral parts of culture. According to the theory of "cultural turn of translation", the basic unit in translating is not words, or sentences, or discourse, but culture. Study of translation is the study of cultural interaction. Films and TV playsare a part of culture, so the translation of them should also be done in a specific socio-cultural context. As the main purpose of E-C audiovisual translation is to meet the needs of the Chinese audience, the value of audiovisual works could only be realized when the audience enjoy them. So the translated version is not satisfactory without the audience's reception and appreciation. Bearing this point in mind, translators should take into consideration the target language audience's acceptability and aesthetic expectation, and try to make the translated works acceptable to the Chinese audience. Audiovisual products like film and TV are also a kind of art in nature. The translator is expected to transfer not only the message of the source text but also the artistic way the message is expressed in the source language (SL). Therefore, one of main tasks of the translator is to represent the artistic constituents in the original to the target audience.Furthermore, film and TV works have a unique style, as they possess dialogue as their primary component and employ language full of colloquialism accompanied by a possible colorful body language. And their translation should synchronize with the characters" lip rounding, pause and body language, for these features are integral parts of audiovisual language; which, according to the thesis, should be given full consideration to and well represented in the target text.This thesis is altogether composed of five chapters: Chapter One is the introduction of the thesis. This part introduces the present situation of study of E-C audiovisual translation at home and abroad and the significance of this thesis. Chapter Two deals with the definition and history of audiovisual translation, and then analyzes its constraints and characteristics by comparing it with other types of translation. Chapter Three analyzes the relationship between E-C audiovisual translation and culture, style and receptor, examines the goals of E-C audiovisual translation, introduces the "cultural turn of translation" and reception theory, an...