Subtitling Translation As A Purposeful Activity

Drawing on skopostheorie and adopting Desperate Housewives as a case study, we explore how the translator deals with subtitling translation in the case TV series guided by "Function of TT" as the skopos of his translational action.Subtitling is the process of providing synchronized captions for word in audio-visual texts. In audio-visual materials, the communicative task can be fulfilled by several channels: picture, dialogue, sound / music effect and written text. Functionalist theories of translation claim that the dominant translation strategies may vary for different purposes of audio-visual texts. The intended target audience's demand with their cultural-specific knowledge and their expectations is the most important factor which determines the purpose of the TT.The target audiences of this series in China are mostly college students and young people who have learned English and acquired knowledge of the western society. Thus most Chinese viewers can identify with the outlook of life of those housewives. Accordingly the subtitles must be expressive and appellative enough so that the viewers can better peer through the inner world of the characters and appreciate the comedic effects of the original dialogues. However, not everyone has a good command of the English language. So we can see that function of the subtitles is to provide supplementary information to the image and original soundtrack. Thus the subtitles should be short and simple enough while providing sufficient information. Only when the subtitles are informative can the expressive and appellative function of the subtitles be achieved. We hope to find what translation strategies have been adopted to realize the informative, expressive and appellative functions of the original dialogues.