| Today, with China’s open-up and social economic development, as the carrier ofculture and media, film and television works have a more abundant culturalconnotation and cross-cultural communication mission. The translation and spread offilm and television works not only strengthen the understanding and communicationbetween different countries, but also play an important role for the social lives andvalues of ordinary people.Domestication and foreignization are the appellation for two translationstrategies. According to the definition in Dictionary of Translation Studies which iscompiled by Schuttleworth and Cowie, domestication refers to a translation strategywhich adopts transparent and smooth style to as far as possible reduce target languagereaders’disacquaintance to foreign texts. Foreignization refers to a translation strategywhich deliberately breaks up target language’s norm to retain some foreign languagefeatures of source texts.[1]In order to deal with the relationship between the sourcelanguage’s culture and the target language’s culture, translators should make a choicein these two basic translation strategies during the process of translation.This thesis discusses how these two translation strategies are applied in subtitletranslation through analyzing Chinese and foreign film and TV series. Throughanalyzing the specific translation process of film and TV works, the author draws thefollowing conclusion: in order to fulfill the specific translation purpose, domesticationand foreignization should be used jointly according to writer’s intention, translation’spurpose, text type and readers’factors in subtitle translation.This thesis adopts qualitative and quantitative methods. The proper examples areselected to explain the process of analyzing film and television translationphenomenon. The selected examples are all pondered over and sifted carefully. Theyhave strong representativeness, which avoids subjective and personal perceptualdiscussion. The examples in this study are recorded faithfully. The selected film andTV series are all from works which are issued or broadcasted by official missions. This study puts emphasis on dialectical analysis and thought of the collected corpus,so the conclusion has more persuasion than those examples which are selected onlyby perceptual ability.In addition to introduction and conclusion, the thesis is divided into fourchapters.Chapter one is the literature review. This chapter is subdivided into three parts.The first one is about previous studies on film translation abroad, including researchsituation, achievements and representative figures. Western scholars started it earlier,whether the research on the breadth or depth, there are some experience worthy ofChinese scholars to think about for reference. The second part discusses the previousstudies on film translation in China. Film translation studies started late in our country.The level of film translation theory research is relatively low, we even do not have atheory system but grope in practice. The third part introduces some scholars whowork on film translation theory in China. Among them are Professor Qian Shaochang,Professor Ma Zhengqi, Professor Zhang Chunbai, Professor Li Yunxing and the senioreditor Zhao Chunmei, etc.Chapter two, which is subdivided into two parts, is about theoretical basis. Thefirst part discusses the fundamental strategies of film translation. Translation studiesshow that the basic methods of translation either literal translation or free translation.The basic method of film translation is no exception. The basic film translationstrategy is not an isolation strategy separated from other film translation strategies. Ithas a very close relationship with other film translation strategies. Exactly speaking,the basic film translation strategy is foundation of other film translation strategies.The second part introduces domestication and foreignization in detail, including theirmeaning, development history, controversy and countermeasures. Domesticationrefers to a kind of translation taking target language as the result, namely it takesexpression and the language standard which target language culture can accept,making the text fluent and coherent, which is more suitable for the target audience.Foreignization aims at taking source language as result, namely trying best to keep theoriginal style and making the exotic culture of source language survive. To adopt language standard which does not conform to target language in order to make thetarget readers enjoy authentic exotic style. Domestication can be traced back toBritain in the 17th century. In the early nineteenth century, foreignization rose inGermany. Controversy between foreignization and domestication has existed sincetranslation activities appeared. It includes controversy of definition, attitude, methodor strategy, and value. Foreignization and domestication are two sides of a pair ofcontradictory. They are not only opposite, but also should be unified. Therefore, tohandle the relationship between them, the key is still use dialectical view. Intranslation practice, we should consciously think and grasp domestication andforeignization these two methodological principles in the practice.Chapter three is an overview of film and television translation. The chapter isalso divided into three parts. The first part introduces the features of film andtelevision works. It includes entertainment product attribute of mass culture,comprehensive art product attributes, literature attributes, epochal and socialityattribute, transcultural communication attributes of film and television works. Thesecond part introduces the features of film and television language. Mr. QianShaochang who is engaged in film translation for many years summarizes the filmand television language characteristics for listening, comprehensiveness, instant,popularity and no notes these five kinds in his article“Film Translation -- More andMore Important Area of Translation Garden”. This is the authoritative interpretationfor film and television language’s features of film translation research field at present.The third part is about studies on subtitle translation, including its definition,classification and features. Just as its name implies, subtitle is words displayed on thescreen, so that the audiences can better understand the story’s plot. According todifferent standards, subtitle translation can be divided into different types. There aredifferent features of subtitles from the perspective of form and content.Chapter four is about the analysis of two cases. In this chapter, the author selectstwo representative film and TV series to analyze--Chinese film“The Founding of aRepublic”and American TV series“The Simpsons”. Through concrete examples theauthor summarizes how domestication and foreignization are used accurately in subtitle translation of Chinese and foreign film and TV series. The Founding of aRepublic is filmed as gift works for the 60th anniversary of the founding of People’sRepublic of China and the First Plenary Meeting of Chinese People’s PoliticalConsultative Conference which is held for 60th anniversary. After releasing, TheFounding of a Republic acquires a huge success. It gained the 30th Chinese FilmFlowers Award as the best feature film and the 10th Changchun Film Festival GoldDeer Award as the best film. Its box office reaches up to 430 million which is thehighest film revenue in China. The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom createdby Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The Simpsons has won dozensof awards since its debut as a series, including 27 Primetime Emmy Awards, 27 AnnieAwards and a Peabody Award. Meanwhile, these two works’exquisite subtitletranslation also let Chinese and foreign audiences understand foreign and China’snational conditions more clearly. It also plays a certain role in foreign publicity ofChinese and foreign culture.Then there is the conclusion. From the above analysis, the author of the presentthesis highly suggests that the best way is appropriate integration of domesticationand foreignization. They should not conflict with each other and can co-exist andcomplement each other. In the meantime, film and TV translation should be guidedwith a complete set of theoretical supports and systematic framework by influentialprofessional scholars and translators and should be paid the same attention as literaryworks. |
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