A Tentative Study On Subtitling Translation-from The Perspective Of Science Of Communication

With the deepening of globalization,translated movie,especially from English, has become a popular means of entertainment and an effective media of mass communication hence more attention towards movie translation.Movie translation helps the audiences better understand the content of foreign movie,and maximizes the communicative function of the movie all over the world.As an important mass media, movie conveys information to the audiences via visual,aural and other channels. Therefore,there are two major forms for movie translation:dubbing and subtitling.At the present time,for its time-saving and cost-efficient characters,subtitling translation comes to attract more attention.Subtitling,with its unique characteristics,differs a lot from other genres of literary translation,and linguistic studies alone will not solve all the problems. Therefore,the study of subtitling translation has to seek help from other disciplines, and the practice of subtitling translation needs to adopt new modes of thinking and take advantage of new manifestation in order to better convey information in the movie and fully realize its communication function.This thesis tends to explore E-C subtitling translation from the perspective of the Science of Communication and attempts to search for effective references for both subtitling translation theory and practice,which is proved to be feasible.The study on subtitling translation from the perspective of science of communication is not only of significance but also of necessity.Science of communication,a recently developed discipline,is of great importance to subtitling translation,providing the study of subtitling translation with a broader vision,and helping to reveal the essential meaning of subtitling translation as an intercultural and communicative activity as well as the ultimate goal of subtitling translation.Due to the communicative function of subtitling translation,the translator has to take full consideration of the factors that will have impacts on the communication effect in order to avoid focusing only on one research subject and insufficient research,which would be attributed to the pure linguistic study.This thesis attempts to apply science of communication to the subtitling translation,aiming to set up a theoretical framework for subtitling translation studies,and enhance subtitling translation practice focusing on its informative,recreational and communicative functions.Based on the analysis of the communication elements in Lasswell's 5 W Model: translator,information,media,receiver and effect,this thesis studies how elements in communication process influence the subtitling translation strategies,and find that in the process of translation,translator is the gatekeeper,and is of additivity,integrity and adherency;therefore translator shoulders responsibilities of inspection,evaluation, guidance and coordination to make sure the conveyed information is consistent with the social and moral standards of the target audiences.Elimination,weakening and substitution strategies are commonly utilized to prevent harmful,wrong,false and other information that is against the social mores of the target audiences and make sure the quality of the translated materials.Information is another element in the process of translation,and information conveyed in the movie is of the features being recreational and informative,which requires subtitle translators to provide more details for the audiences.Information insufficiency will reduce the audience's understanding about the movie,while information over-sufficiency will distract audience's attention or add the reading pressure to the audience with subtitle's constraint of instantaneity.Thus,in this thesis,annotations and compromised strategies are suggested to make sure that audiences receive moderate information within a fixed period.As a communication media,movie conveys information through visual,aural and other channels.This multi-channel character makes it possible to reduce the content of translated subtitle, which will not only satisfy the audience's pursuing of "original flavor",but also shorten the subtitles on the screen and ease the pressure on audiences.The target audience is the receptor of the translated subtitle,and they selectively pay attention to, comprehend and memorize certain information in the subtitle.Therefore,without the consideration of audience's capability of acceptance,the communication effect of the translated subtitle will not meet the expectation.Regarding of audience's psychological expectation and physical acceptance capabilities,subtitle should be easily-reading and thoroughly-comprehensible,and "difficult words" should be avoided to remove obstacles that might confuse the audience during reading.Through the analysis of the communication elements which have impacts on strategies of subtitling translation,this thesis selected Die Hard 4,Accepted and National Treasure 2,etc.as case studies to explore strategies of subtitling translation from three major aspects:translator as a responsible gatekeeper;moderate information; audience-oriented.With the development of the open-up and social reform in China,an increasing number of foreign movies are available and this thesis just takes movies released in the latest three years as study cases.We hope that more raw materials will be analyzed in the future to support the study and more efforts will be dedicated into this field. Meanwhile,as this thesis studies subtitling translation in the scope of the science of communication,more efforts are necessary for both the study of science of communication and its application in subtitling translation.Last but not least,C-E translation should also be encouraged as a useful supplement to our study.