A Tentative Approach To Audience-Oriented Subtitling

The highly-developed mass media gives rise to growing exchange in the audio-visual culture between different countries,and studies on the audio-visual translation, should thus acquire greater significance. The screen translation seems to have been less focused on and studied than text translation by theorists. Thus the guiding rules which can be followed on screen translation are fragmental and not systematical. Actually screen translation, especially subtitling, shares most features of text translation, but with its own characteristics. Beginning with the discussion on these features, several authoritative theories are introduced to instruct subtitling. German functionalist translation theory maintains that all translating activities are determined by its overall purpose(skopos),and this suggests me to explore the translation methods under the guidance of the skopos of audio-visual translation. And I'd also like to point out the advantages of applying communicative theory to the practice of subtitling. However, these theories can only partially apply to the practical use during subtitling since some key guidelines setup barriers for subtitling. By referencing the feasibility and being aware of the limitations of these theories, my viewpoint on subtitling can be promoted as a kind of translation approach which requires the subtitler to transfer effective communication to the target audience with the consideration on three important aspects, namely, subtitle related aspect, linguistic aspect and cultural aspect for the purpose of helping target audience better understand and appreciate of the film. Subtitle related aspect discusses the properties of subtitle which distinguish it from other form of translation. Linguistically, it suggests some translating principles and argues that translators should make positive use of their creativity in their attempt to achieve flexible transfer function from source texts to target texts. Culturally, compared with dubbing, it is recommended to apply the foreignization strategy during subtitling in order to maintain the"foreignness"and make the target audiences enjoy the real exotic culture.