A Study On Translation Strategies Of Historical Movies From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

Dubbed film referring to a new audio-visual product accelerates the development of movieindustry, and it is also considered as not only a kind of goods, but also a new kind of art form. Asthe carrier of native culture, dubbed film is different from a regular film, because it plays a rolein promoting cross-cultural communication. Dubbed film can be studied from the view of notonly language translation, but a kind of social phenomenon. The rich variety of films entailsdifferent strategies in translating films to the target language. Given the properties of historicalmovie, the author conducts the research on the principles and strategies of historical movietranslation in light of functional equivalence theory, which proves to be feasible and valuable.Functional equivalence theory proposed by Nida has been widely employed in the studies ofliterary translation. The theory is characterized by two principles. One is to emphasize theimportance of the reader’s position which means a privilege of the readers’ response of thetranslated text. The other is to highlight the place of meaning in translation. Therefore, themission of the translator is to help the readers gain as much information as possible when thereaders are reading both the translated text and the original text. With regards to the movietranslation, the place of the movie audiences equals to the place of the readers aforesaid infunctional equivalence theory. Therefore, Nida’s functional equivalence theory is of greatsignificance to the study of movie translation.The thesis begins with an overview of the birth and the significance of Nida’s functionalequivalence theory. And then, briefly introducing the definition and the linguistic features ofhistorical movie, the author explains the importance of functional equivalence theory to thetranslation of historical movie.lays down the theoretical framework by explaining the theory indetail. Next, briefly introducing the definition and the linguistic features of historical movie, theauthor explains the importance of functional equivalence theory to the translation of historicalmovie. Finally, the translation procedures are found to be different between historical movietranslation and general literary work translation. In addition, the author summarizes thetranslation strategies of historical movie translation, including six-step procedure and the techniques of translating such as cutting, reversing, transplanting and so on. The translationstrategy of historical movie translation aforesaid is studied and concluded with a number ofexamples on the basis of functional equivalence theory. Finally, for the sake of standardizing thedubbed movie translation, the author proposes to found the dubbed movie translation systemafter doing the study on historical movie translation strategy. A great deal of examples areprovided to illustrate the application of functional equivalence theory to the translation ofhistorical movie. To take it a further step, the author attempts to establish the dubbed movietranslation system based on the findings of the present research.