Film Subtitle Translation From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

The 20th century has witnessed the development of China's film industry. Communication between China and other countries in the world has become much closer than ever since China's entry of WTO and there is a growing tendency of learning Chinese among foreign countries. Therefore more and more Chinese films, as a popular means of mass media and an effective way of dedicating China's culture, swam into the world. Thus a sub-discipline of translation studies---audiovisual translation (AVT) emerged among which subtitle translation is believed to be a vital branch. It makes it possible for most foreign audiences to easily appreciate both the original Chinese and these films, and in return it has given rise to the study of subtitle translation strategies.However, subtitle translation is far from being perfect. People show less concern about subtitle translation than that of literature works. Furthermore, there is few theoretical writing on AVT in general and on subtitle translation in particular. As a result, subtitle translation is still at a preliminary stage. No one has provided a systematic principle to conduct subtitle translation, and the current equivalence-oriented theories or relevance theories cannot provide guidance for this new translation area.Skopostheorie, which is used as the theoretical framework of this thesis, has opened up a new perspective to subtitle translation studies and is believed to be an important complement to translation studies. It suggests that subtitle translation be a purposeful activity and translation strategies should be determined by the purpose of the target texts which is mainly fulfilled by the intended target audiences'demand with their cultural-specific knowledge and their expectations. It intends to provide the most relevant information to the audiences of a certain culture within the constraints of time and space. Therefore, during the process of subtitle translation, the translator should take all the factors into consideration to identify the translation purpose (skopos) and then adopt corresponding translation strategies. From this point, the author made a descriptive analysis of subtitling process to explore the appropriate approaches. Based on this analysis, the author made a case study of Founding of a Republic to further illustrate the necessity for subtitle translators to adopt different approaches to produce the audience-oriented translation.