Film Subtitle Translation From German Functioanl Pcrspective

With the increasingly rapid development of globalization, the political, economic and cultural communications among different countries have got a further achievement. In particular, the cultural communication and exchange has become more and more frequent than ever before. Being one of the most important art forms and cultural carriers, films are playing a pivotal role in conveying and furthering cultural exchanges between different countries. Thus, film subtitle translation has gained unprecedented attention following our country's increasing culture interaction with foreign countries.Film subtitle translation belongs to a special form of literature translation, because it is constrained by several subjective and objective factors, including time, space, picture motions and target audience's education background and their corresponding expectation and response. Under the primary principal of conveying the most effective information to the audience, film subtitle translation has to coordinate harmoniously with the picture motions and various sound effects in the original film as well, then finally, assist the audience to fully understand and enjoy the foreign films as the native audience do.In the light of German Functional Theories, film subtitle translation is defined as a purposeful, interpersonal and intercultural communication process. All the translation methods and strategies adopted during the process are determined by the final purpose and expected function of the target text. The translators are greatly freed from the bondage of traditional Equivalence Theory before 1970s, entailing the translator to gain more initiatives in employing translating strategies or methods to achieve the ideal target text.The explanatory-descriptive method along with case study will be adopted in the thesis. Through the comprehensible application of German Functional Theories into film subtitle translation practices, the author tries to integrate Reiss's Text Typology Theory, Manttari's Translational Action Theory, Vermeer's Skopostheorie and Nord's Loyalty plus Function Theory with the film subtitle translating practices. The author hopes that her efforts can bring some useful suggestions to further the theoretical development of film subtitle translating research. Producing a successful film subtitle that can achieve similar response between original audience and target audience is possible under the framework of German Functional Theories. It is still expected that the thesis may provide a deeper understanding of this theory to the readers. Furthermore, the guidance and application of German Functional Theories in the area of practical texts translating can be further expanded and perfected during the widespread application in the future.