A Study Of Functional Equivalence On E-C Subtitle Translation

In recent years, with the improvements on the audience's knowledge and appreciation levels, more and more attention has been attracted to the E-C translation of the subtitles in foreign films and TV series. Due to its own features-- the language should be concise, vivid and colloquial, it demands that we should also use the concise, vivid and popular language in translating the subtitles from English into Chinese. However, the study on the E-C translation of subtitles is left behind the traditional studies on translation, which is immature, as well as not theoretically systematic.The functional equivalence theory, which is proposed and developed by Nida, the famous translation theorist, puts more emphasis on the readers—it focus on whether the target readers have the same response towards the target text as the original readers do towards the source text. Compared with the traditional translation theories, functional equivalence theory doesn't pay much attention to the equivalence between the source and target words. Owing to the characters of films and TV series, the author of this thesis believes that the functional equivalence theory is directly instructive in studying the E-C translation of subtitles. Because there is a direct connection between the success of the films and TV series and the response of the audience, namely, it cares about whether the response of the original language audience is as same as the target language audience, the author of this thesis believes that we can apply the functional equivalence theory to study the E-C translation of subtitles. What's more, in order to achieve the closest equivalent, we should apply various translation strategies during such translation practice.In this thesis, the author applies the method of case study to study a great number of cases of the E-C translation of subtitles in various foreign films and TV series from the perspective of the functional equivalence theory. On the one hand, the author illustrates that it is feasible and necessary to study the E-C translation of subtitles from such theory; On the other hand, the author also demonstrates the instructive significance of the functional equivalence theory in practice and the strategies can be applied to fulfill the functional equivalence.