On Principles And Strategies Of Subtitle Translation

Under the context of the accelerating globalization, films have played a more and more important role in furthering mutual understanding and promoting cross-culture communication among different countries and regions, which gives a great impetus to the development of academic studies on subtitle translation in order to overcome the language and culture barriers in frequent exchanges of films in the world wide. Compared with the traditional literary translation, the domestic studies on subtitle translation started rather late. Although there are some academic articles of studies published in this field, subtitle translation in China, as a new branch of translation studies, has made a slow progress, and has not yet come up with the systematic theory that can guide the practices and studies of English-Chinese subtitle translation. This thesis attempts to apply Newmark's translation theories to the study of subtitle translation, and to summarize the effective and workable principles and strategies for subtitle translation, which are expected to have some enlightenment on the development of subtitle translation.Some basic concepts of subtitle translation are introduced in the first place, including definition, classification, nature, and constraints. And then five characteristics of subtitle translation are summarized. Meanwhile, a brief review of history and status quo of subtitle translation are also mentioned, and then some limitations of previous studies in this field are discussed. Consequently, the author discusses the feasibility and application of Newmark's translation theories to the study of subtitle translation. Peter Newmark, a famous translation theorist, has introduced functional grammar and cross-cultural communicative theory into his studies of translation theories, and proposed his major contribution to translation studies: Communicative Translation (CT) and Semantic Translation (ST). He holds that CT and ST are not contradictory strategies so that they could coexist and be both used in translation to fulfill purposes of various translation practices. From his point of view, the proper translation strategy of a specific text should be determined on the basis of the analysis of text typology, purpose of translation, intention of author as well as the readership of target translation. Based on the three major language functions: the expressive function, the informative function and the vocative function in communication, Newmark divides the texts into the following three types: the expressive text, the informative text, and the vocative text. In fact, most of texts have all the three functions, and the text type is determined by its dominant language function. And thus the author holds that the subtitles are the integration of informative text, vocative text, and expressive text, but the informative function and the vocative function are predominant in languages functions of subtitles. And the purpose of subtitles is to deliver and convey the original information of soundtrack to the audiences, and enable them to enjoy the films without linguistic and cultural barriers. The intentions of director will affect the language style of film dialogues. Therefore, the author believes that the above four factors should be taken into account in deciding on the strategies for subtitle translation.Based on the application of Newmark's translation theories to subtitle translation, the author of this thesis suggests that in subtitle translation, Communicative Translation should be adopted as major translation strategy with the necessary supplement of Semantic Translation. Furthermore, considering the constraints and characteristics of subtitle translation, the author summarizes three principles of subtitle translation: accuracy, conciseness, and instant legibility.Finally, the author probes into a case study on specific strategies of subtitle translation in use of the examples which are taken from subtitles of two films: If You Are the One I and If You Are the One II. Under the guidelines of the general translation strategy for subtitling suggested in this thesis, and the three basic principles of subtitling, the author has put forward seven effective and workable strategies for subtitle translation and made elaborate exposition on each of them with convincing examples. They are reduction, expansion, reformulation, literal translation, paraphrase, substitution, and making implied meaning explicit. Subject to the particular constraints of subtitle translation, the strategies of reduction, expansion and reformulation have proved able to meet the requirements of basic principles of subtitle translation. Aiming at the rich cultural embodiment in film dialogues, the last four strategies are applied to effectively dealing with the culture-specific elements in subtitles of films.The principles and strategies of subtitle translation suggested in this thesis are expected to improve the quality of subtitle translation, to accurately transfer the information of the original language and culture, and instant comprehension of the semantic and stylistic meanings of the source language speeches. This study is aimed at providing some enlightenment on dealing with the linguistic and cultural problems in the practices of subtitle translation, and consequently improving the cross-cultural communication of films in the world wide.