A Functional Approach To Film Subtitle Translation

A surprising imbalance exists between the enormous impact of audiovisual translation on society and the little research on it. Subtitling, as one of the most important modes of audiovisual translation, has seen greatest growth among different modes and will continue to grow in the foreseeable future by virtue of its advantages as the quickest method that comes hand in hand with globalisation, and also the most economical to implement. Studies on this form of audiovisual translation seem to be imperative. However, there is only a small number of researches in China, and most of them are conclusions drawn from personal experience and intuition with little or hardly any theoretical guidance, discussing the features and principles of subtitle translation on a micro-level. The present thesis, in the hope of conducting a scientific study on subtitle translation so as to improve subtitle translation study, describes and analyses film subtitle translation from a macro-level by adopting the Genman functionalist translation theory as its theoretical foundation.In the thesis, the enlightening views of the German functionalist translation theory are employed as a guiding principle for subtitle translation study and to provide standard to evaluate subtitle translations. According to the text typology in that theory, the translator should grasp the distinctive features of subtitles, that is comprehensiveness, immediacy and colloquialism, and translate subtitles in a brief and easy-to-understand way; moreover, emphasis should be attached to the two major functions of film subtitle translation, that is informative and operative/appellative which allow the audience to understand and be attracted by films. According to the skopos theory, subtitle translation is a purposeful activity and subtitle translation skopos determines the whole process and the choice of translation strategy; an appropriate translation is the one that can fulfill its translation skopos and communicative functions, thus the evaluation criterion of subtitle translation is adequacy instead of equivalence. According to the theory of translational action, in the process of subtitle translational action, the translator should consider a series of factors such as the intention of the film director, the cultural background and expectations of the target audience, the constraints of subtitle as a multi-semiotic text, etc.. among which the target audience are the most import, thus acceptability of a subtitle translation to the target audience is significant. According to function plus loyalty theory, the translator should pay attention to the analysis of the original film script, respect the opinions and ideas in the film, and should successfully render the function-related elements selected from the original film script.Meanwhile, the present study points out that the functionalist translation theory provides a top-down translation model for subtitle translation. And within this translation model, a case study of Kung Fu Pandais conducted in a top-down manner. The case study starts from skopos identification and source text analysis of the film, discusses three versions translated by on-line subtitle groups from two aspects:the Chinese culture-specific elements and the frequent occurrence of humours. Through adequacy analysis, the present author finds that in order to achieve their translation purpose, on-line subtitle groups adopts translation strategies in a flexible way, which can be seen from the application of rarely-used subtitle translation methods such as addition and noting; in addition to this, hot words and fashionable Internet slangs are preferred by these groups, which create an intimacy between the translations and the netizens, thus their translations are well received. The justification of different translation strategies and explanation of successful subtitle translations have proved that the functionalist translation theory is strongly explanatory and inclusive. From the above analysis, we can see that the functional approach to subtitle translation is instructive, and thus applicable and useful.