A Study Of The Translation Strategies Of Subtitle From The Perspective Of Cultural Translation

With the increasing development of economic and cultural globalization, the connection between China and other foreign countries is becoming closer and closer. And people start to know the cultures of other countries. But watching foreign movies and TV-plays are the most important ways to make Chinese people understand foreign cultures. Nowadays large amount of foreign movies and TV plays pour into China’s market, which makes subtitle translation become more and more important in translation field. Good subtitle translation can attract more audiences and make people know foreign cultures well and promote cultural diffusion and communication.Subtitle translation is a new part in the translation field, which reaches certain achievement. Western countries develop a further and deeper research in terms of film subtitle translation and they get a consensus and norm on translation strategies and translation norm. But there is no systematic theory on subtitle translation in China till now. This thesis chooses very famous TV-play Lie to Me1, movie Shrek1and Kung Fu Panda1as cases to study what translation strategies the translator uses in the process of subtitle translation from Susan Bassnett’s Cultural Translation Theory. According to Susan Bassnett’s theory, culture is the basic unit of the translation, instead of words, sentence, and discourse. Cultural equivalence is the basic principle of the translation. And translation should not be limited to the description of original, but the text in target language is functional equivalent. During translation, Translator should make the target culture and source culture to be functional equivalent. The target text has effects on the readers in the target culture and it is the same as the source text having effects on the readers in the source culture. During translation, translators have to pay more attention to the phenomenon of different culture, follow the relevant translation principles and adopt a certain strategies.The thesis consists of six chapters:chapter one is an introduction about research background, research aim, and data collection. The chapter two is literature review, in which the author mainly introduces some foreign scholars and Chinese scholars. Chapter three sets up the theoretical framework—cultural translation theory. Chapter four mainly introduces the dubbing translation and subtitle translation. Chapter five analyzes the translation strategies of subtitle translation of TV-play Lie to Me1, movie Shrek1and Kung Fu Panda1from cultural translation theory. The translators mainly adopt four translation strategies in the TV play and the two films, such as, domestification, Substitution, Free translation, and adding strategies, which achieve the best communication effect. Chapter six is the conclusion which summaries the whole thesis. The author can find out that cultural translation is the essence of subtitle translation. Subtitle translation is not only a transformation in culture, but also a bridge between different cultures and makes the culture communicate better. And the thesis provides some suggestions about field of film subtitle translation to scholars who interested in it and it can help translators make more good subtitles and make audiences know more about foreign cultures.