Analysis Of The English Subtitle Translation From The Perspective Of The Receprional Aesthetic

With a rising quantity of foreign films and TV programs being introducedinto China, a relative new and particular translation form--film subtitle translation, hasbecome a vital and indispensable field of translation. Subtitle, one of the major formsof screen translation, has occupied a significant position in the transmission of culturalvalue, which, nevertheless, has not received the deserved attention from the scholarsand thus remains as one of the most necessitous areas of research in translation studies.Therefore, it’s needful to probe subtitle translation with respect to the cross-culturalcommunication through the translated subtitles.This thesis attempts to be devoted to the analysis of the subtitle translationof English movies into Chinese on the basis of the Receptional Aesthetic Theory. TheReceptional Aesthetic Theory has raised the status of reader and his reading activity toan unprecedented height. Receptional Aesthetic reckons that the literary workcomprises the literary text with indeterminacy and the concretization of reader duringhis reading process, only when the two are combined together can intact literary workbe produced. It shifts the focus of literary study from texts and authors to thetranslators and the reception of readers. The advocators assert that reader is of prior concern in literary translations, which means that the literary works should beregarded to be produced for the reader, which has raised challenge to the traditionalliterary appreciation theories like “source text-centered” theories and “originalauthor-centered” theories. Receptional Aesthetic really has discovered new places forfilm subtitle translation; therefore, it is applied in this thesis to research on it.In subtitle translation, the subtitler is involved in the two-way inference andcultural transmission. On the one hand, the subtitler must figure out the originalintention and related information based on his comprehending with the speaker, on theother hand, the viewers would appreciate and question to the subtitle on the screen inthe process of reception, hence the target language viewers’ cognitive ability andexpectations should be taken into consideration by the subtitler as well.The overview study of films and televisions and subtitle translation areintroduced at first, and then a brief introduction of Reception Aesthetics like someimportant ideas will be presented, next, the author investigates the close connectionbetween Receptional Aesthetic and subtitle translation, the process of subtitletranslation from the perspective of Reception Aesthetics, the enlightment of ReceptionAesthetics on subtitle translation and translation strategies viewed by ReceptionAesthetics. In order to put these theories into practice, she resorts to the Englishmovie subtitles as the case study, and apply the main ideas of Receptional Aestheticespecially “horizon of expectations”“indeterminacy of text” and “vacancy ofmeaning” and translation strategies viewed by Reception Aesthetics to analyze thechosen subtitle cases. For the sake of convenience and clear structure, most of theseChinese subtitles selected as examples are categorized by different strategies havebeen analyzed to see whether they are appropriate and successful. The last part is theconclusion, the author points out the leading significance of Receptional Aesthetic inthe theories of subtitle translation and she holds that by making use of it we canachieve more innovative and more ideal results, simultaneously, the author also hopesthat more and more translators will engage in the subtitle translation field to promotethe cross-cultural communication.