Rewriting While Subtitling: A Network Of Patronage And Technicality

The study of (multi) media translation is a relatively new research field in China. The present research takes interest in one of its categories: film translation. There are generally two kinds of practices concerning film translation, dubbing and interlingual subtitling. Of these two practices, subtitling is the focus of this study. The research issue in this thesis is the rewriting of English films through subtitling. The supposition is that in interlingual subtitling, some English films are undergoing a process of what Lefevere calls "rewriting" as a result of cultural disparities and the technical properties of subtitling. Therefore a network is established as the ground for the study of this issue, suggesting the cultural implications of film translation and the technical properties of subtitling. Their collaboration makes the rewriting of a film possible and necessary. The discussion in this paper is thus divided into two parts: cultural rewriting and technical rewriting, each focusing on one aspect of the influence on subtitling and the impact they have on the subtitled films. Two American films, Training Day and Donnie Brasco are used as exemplification.In terms of cultural rewriting, the discussion centers round one of the dominant factors that Lefevere talks about: patronage. A detailed analysis of the patrons of subtitling reveals the important role censorship plays. To survive the censorship in China, the subtitlers very often purify the original films that have verbal contents too offensive to be accepted by the dominant ideology in China, which is partly represented by the censorship. The purification of English films, especially of those R-rated films marks a noticeable trend in film translation in China today. In terms of technical rewriting, there are two major points in discussion concerning the technicalities of subtitling. One is the change of text mode, from spoken English to written Chinese, the other is the technical constraints, time and space of the subtitles presented. These two aspects of the technicalities ofsubtitling again cause the occurrences of rewriting. Considering the change of text mode, subtitlers often standardize the sub-standard English in the original dialogues and considering the technical constraints, they usually simplify the original dialogues. Standardization and simplification can be seen as another two trends of rewriting in subtitling.The conclusion then, is that while subtitling English films, subtitlers tend to rewrite some of them for either cultural or technical reasons. The effect of rewriting includes purification, standardization and simplification of the original films.