A Study On Chinese-english Film Subtitling From The Perspective Of Communicative Translation Theory

As film industry increasingly booms and expands in overseas markets, film, as a form of mass cultural products, plays an important role in cross-culture exchanges and communications to which translation is the key element. As a newly flourished subject, the study of film translation becomes more and more significance and begins to attract more and more attention in translation studies.Scholars and experts have been struggling to build its own theoretical framework for film translation study to symbolize its independence as an important branch of translation studies; the establishment of theoretical framework for researching is based on literary translation theories combining its own characteristics; on the other hand, the film products posses unique characteristics that should be fully considered in the process of film translation practice.Generally, there are three types of film translation: subtitling, dubbing and voice-over. This thesis only discusses the issue of film subtitling-the dominant type of Chinese-English film translation. Based on previous researches, it applies Newmark's communicative translation theory in Chinese-English film subtitling. Newmark claims that the successful translation is to covey communicative effect of source language; and it should be target language-oriented and target reader-oriented, making them receive the effect as close as that received on the readers of the original. There is one more aspect except for dealing linguistic and cultural differences should be considered, i.e. features of instantaneity and combination of oral speeches and images in film subtitles, to achieve such communicative effect. This thesis proposes four subtitling principles based on Newmark's views, i.e. comprehensibility, economy, equivalent effect and generic principle. Hero is used as a case study for analyzing various subtitling strategies and discussing how these strategies reflect the proposed four subtitling principles, furthermore, in order to enforce the applicability of communicative translation theory.This thesis applies Newmark's communicative translation theory in accordance with the characteristics of film subtitling, which is significant to establish theoretical framework in this area. And it summarizes four subtitling principles and various subtitling strategies in Hero in order to provide guidance to Chinese-English film subtitling practice and promote the development of Chinese film industry in overseas markets.