When Disney Mulan Returns Home

According to some scholars, all translations are more or less a kind of rewriting or manipulation of the original texts for a certain purpose. American scholar Andre Lefevere classifies the fundamental manipulating power in literature into three parts: ideology, poetics and patronage.Disney Mulan has been very successful in most countries in the world. However, when it was released in China, it aroused controversy because of the Americanization in the film. Therefore, the subtitle translation in this film deserves investigation. This thesis explores the reason why domestication strategy is adopted in the English-Chinese subtitle translation of Disney Mulan from the perspective of ideology, poetics and patronage. This study gives a close textual analysis of the typical corresponding subtitles in both Chinese and English in Disney Mulan to see why and how domestication strategy is employed in terms of language and style, under the manipulation of ideology, poetics and patronage. It is pointed out that the manipulation of ideology, poetics and patronage results in the employment of domestication strategy in the subtitle translation. Thus, because of the manipulation of ideology, poetics and patronage and the purposes and profits of commercial films, this thesis suggests that translators should mainly employ domesticating strategy in the subtitle translation of international movies so that better subtitle translations will come into being, thus guaranteeing the box-tickets and profits of the international commercial films.