On Subtitling Translation For Films And TV Programs

With the improvement of people's spiritual and cultural life in recent years, they are able to see more and more foreign films and TV programs. However, language is a great barrier for people to understand them. Thus, subtitling translation is necessary for removing this language barrier. This thesis discusses subtitling translation of films and TV programs by starting from an overview of subtitling. It first introduces the definition, characteristics, types, function of subtitling and constraints of subtitling translation, and then talks about history of subtitling translation. By comparing subtitling translation in the early times with that of today, it is concluded that subtitling translation presents the following trends:(1) we used to stress the one-to-one correspondence relationship between the source language and the target language, but now, subtitling translation is more flexible, and a lot of phrases with Chinese cultural characteristics are used, and the net language and pop words are frequently used. So we can say subtitling translation displays a trend toward fashion and entertainment. (2) In the early times, we mainly import foreign films to our country, but now, more and more Chinese films are exported to the outside world, so the source language and target language switch their roles. What's more, the films exported by our country are usually dubbed with English or other languages by the actors in our country, but now, there appear a lot of original English movies that are set to the classical Chinese stories or legends. (3) Although foreignization is becoming more and more popular in literary translation, domestication will remain the dominating strategy in subtitling translation. (4) The speed of subtitling translation is greatly improved with more and more people working on it. This thesis also analyses the causes for the above-mentioned trends and the problems revealed in the evolution of subtitling translation. Subtitling translation is deeply influenced by social factors, and this thesis mainly elaborates the language and ideology factors. Ideology not only affects the themes of the films to be translated selected by the governments, but also affects the mass psychology, and thus further affects subtitling translation. Evolution of our language reflects how the cultural trends, which are influenced by changes in all aspects of social life, influence requirements on subtitling translation by the mass.