Cultural Elements In English Film Subtitling And Translation Strategies

With the rapid development of science and technology, cross-cultural communication becomes intensified. More and more people are eager to learn knowledge about foreign countries; because of the differences of languages and cultures of different countries, translation becomes necessary in this process of information exchange. With China's entry into WTO, lots of foreign films are imported there appears the prosperity of film industry in China. However, this prosperity is in sharp contrast with the current situation of the translation of films. So this paper will present the study of English film subtitle translation by applying Nida's functional equivalence, which lays emphasis on the target language readers'responses and calls for equivalent response of the target language audiences.With the cultural turn in translation, translation theorists and scholars see translation not only as linguistic transfer but more as an act of cultural communication, and they are more concerned with cultural elements in translation. The focus of the paper is to discuss how to deal with cultural elements in English film dialogues during translation process.This paper firstly gives a general review on the translation history of English film subtitle translation both at home and abroad. Traditionally, scholars and translation theorists like to select their objects of study on the basis of cultural prestige and it is thought more prestigious to study literary works than to study popular literature, such as film translation. However, this phenomenon changes due to economic and social development. The author lists some representative scholars and their achievements in film translation, especially in film subtitle translation. Then summary of past studies is made to have a clear understanding of the situation in this field.Then the author examines the definitions and unique features of film subtitle translation. Many scholars have defined subtitle and subtitle translation and come to different opinions. The purpose to present these definitions is to have some general idea about subtitle translation. Subtitle translation is subject to some constraints both in technical aspect and linguistic aspect. These constraints lay great burden on translators. Understanding these constraints will be the basis for a successful translation. This paper applies Nida's theory to film translation, so it is important to present his theory and analyze the possibility of applying this theory to film subtitle translation. The third part of this paper deals with culture and film subtitle translation. As the appearance of cultural turn in translation, more and more scholars pay attention to cultural elements in translation, because translation is not only realized in linguistic level but also in cultural level. As to the cultural elements in this paper, the author mainly refers to word sets, such as animal words, color words, words of persons or places; cultural-specific words, mainly refers to idioms and finally cultural images from literary works and daily life.By absorbing the achievements of previous scholars, the author comes to the conclusion that the guiding principles for film subtitle translation should be conciseness, accuracy and principle of achieving equivalence. While translating film dialogues from English to Chinese, problems may arise. These problems can come from the translator, or film subtitle translation itself. To solve these problems, translators must adopt some strategies.