On Subtitling From The Functionalist Perspective

A growing number of high-quality films have been emerging into the flourishing film market. The film makers all over the world try every means to explore a larger foreign market. A good subtitling is one of the prerequisites for Chinese films to enter the international film market. However, it has not drawn enough attention from the scholars yet and there are not any mature theories to guide the subtitling practice where leaves plenty of space for further research.This paper makes an in-depth exploration on subtitling from the functionalist perspective. Firstly, the author reviews the previous researches on subtitling. Then the author attempts to seek theoretical support from the functionalist translation theory to justify the excellent subtitling practice and provides principles for the subtitling criticism. Traditional translation theories have generally advocated a bottom-up analysis of the translation process which is from diction to syntax and then to discourse analysis, while the functionalist translation theory presents a top-down analysis of the translation process. Initially, a translator should analyze the intratextual and intratextual factors to obtain the Skopos of the ST and the TT. Then he can choose the adequate translation type. A translator's choice of proper translation strategies should be based on environmental constraints, audience features and language style.Under the guidance of a comparative text analysis model proposed by the author , which is a modification and improvement of the model proposed by Nord , an important figure of functionalist translation theory, the author makes a case study, a detailed comparative analysis of Chinese-English subtitling of one domestic feature film The Banquet. Through the comparative analysis between source text and target text in both the extratextual and intratextual aspects, the Skopos of translation is confirmed and the reference for the target text production is provided too. In the process of subtitling, the translation problems on four different levels (pragmatic, conventional, linguistic and text-specific) would inevitably appear. So how to deal with them properly to avoid the translation errors in regard to the extratextual and intratextual factors, and to achieve the Skopos and the functions of the English subtitling successfully must be the key issue this paper will explore. Various translation problems on four different levels in the subtitling for The Banquet are discussed, and some proper translation strategies used in the subtitling are summed up and classified (condensation, replacement, generalization, explication, etc.). Meanwhile, some translation errors in the English subtitling, which are caused by the subtitlers'unsuccessful solution to translation problems, are also detected, and some proper suggestive amendments for them are provided as well.The results of this research demonstrate: although subtitling, which is a particular kind of translating, has the temporal and spatial limitations, most of the translation problems of it can be handled well under the guidance of the functionalist theory. As long as the subtitlers rightly analyze the intratextual and extratextual factors which will influence the TT production, many translation problem in special situations can be effectively tackled so as to avoid the translation errors. To a large degree, these results can further prove that functionalist translation theory has a guiding significance to the subtitling practice and can also provide the subtitling criticism with theoretical supports.