Applying Communicative Translation Theory To Translating Subtitles Of English Movies

The thesis is to apply Newmark's communicative translation theory to translating English movie subtitles with the purpose of attaching much importance to the research of movie subtitle translation and thus to some extent encouraging more and more researchers to work on the field of subtitle translation which has been overlooked for a long time.It is well acknowledged that movies, as one kind of the most popular mass media, play an increasingly significant role in transmitting foreign cultures and promoting international cultural exchanges. All movies are culture-loaded, i.e. each movie is stamped with the brand of related cultures. On the one hand, movies are also artistic works created by the movie-producing staff, so they are bound to embody the personal values or beliefs shared by these people and social ideologies they are in favor of. These values or beliefs and social ideologies are the source of the movie motifs, styles and plots. By watching movies and paying attention to these aspects, we can have a deep insight into the foreign cultural environment in which these movies are produced and cultures which movies are concerned with. On the other hand, every movie presents a vivid facet of one country on the screen to the audience. Foreign movies open a window for us to have a glimpse of other cultures such as the unique scenery and terrain of other countries, peculiar customs and habits of their people and so on. Therefore, watching foreign movies is a more effective way to learn foreign cultures and to promote international exchanges. Moreover, recently the opening of the domestic cultural market and the spread of the internet encourage more and more foreign movies to pour into China, thus offering Chinese people opportunities to watch them and learn foreign cultures from them.Besides, owing to the fact that English has become the most popular international language, English movies are dominating over other foreign language movies either in quantity or in quality. However, the majority of Chinese people just know a little English so that they cannot enjoy the original English movies directly. They have to watch translated movies including dubbed movies and subtitled movies. Now, with the improvement of their artistic taste and educational level, more and more Chinese prefer subtitled movies with original sound tracks to dubbed movies which will supply less audial enjoyment than the former. As a result, subtitle translation has drawn people's greater attention in recent years, and many translators are working on the movie subtitle translation. However, the long-term underestimated status of subtitling results in its lack of theoretical researches.Firstly, there are limited research works and publications about movie subtitle translation. Moreover, current researches have been confined to a narrow scope of one or two theories such as Yan Fu's threefold criteria and Nida's functional equivalence. No other researches have been carried out from another new perspective.Secondly, among these works and publications, one of these two theories is always applied to subtitle translation without a systematical and comprehensive analysis of unique features of movies and movie subtitles and a contrast with other translation theories.In view of these problems with current studies, the purpose of the thesis is to try to solve these problems. Firstly, the thesis makes a systematical analysis of movie subtitle translation from four main aspects: the nature of movies, the features of movie subtitles, the nature of subtitling and constraints of subtitles. Then this analysis leads to the discussion of a more applicable translation theory in subtitle translation: Communicative Translation Theory in contrast to Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory. Finally, forty-one examples demonstrate how Communicative Translation Theory is applied to subtitle translation.In short, the thesis aims to start with Newmark's communicative translation theory to supply other people with another new theoretical perspective to study subtitle translation and indirectly encourage more and more translators, theoreticians and even those who are interested in subtitle translation to engage in theoretical researches to promote the prosperity of the market of subtitled movies.