A Study Of Subtitles Translation From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

With the deep development of the cultural exchanges with foreign countries, theaudio-visual culture communication between Western countries and China has becomemore and more frequent. The US TV series swarm into Chinese market over the networkand they are accepted in popularity by Chinese people. The main method of watchingthese TV series is that people watch the original TV series with the assist of Chinesesubtitles. Therefore, subtitles translation has become the point translators focus on.Gossip Girl is a fashionable soap, which is made heavily by CW (ColumbiaBroad-casting System and Warner Bros. Network). There are a lot of fashion elementswhich grasp the influence of modern technology such as telephone and blogs in their life.From the beginning of Gossip Girl on, it is popular among young people with high ratings.Subtitles translation plays a vital role in the high success of Gossip Girl in China.The prevalence of Gossip girl in China attributes to the application of subtitlestranslation because it was played online. Subtitles translation is a process that people makecontinuous choices of language in different context to satisfy the needs of communication.This opinion offers the possibility of analyzing subtitles translation in light of theAdaptation Theory. Due to the limitation of space, time and specific context, subtitlestranslation has its own characteristics, including listening, comprehensive, momentarily,popularity and notes-missing. Subtitles translation of the US TV series is a dynamic process which is complicate on the basis of these features. And translators must adapt toboth the linguistic context covering the lexical level, syntax level, language style and thediscourse context in translation and the communicative context including the mental world,the social world and the physical world of the target audience, leaving the target audienceget what the original audience feel. Take the fifth season of Gossip Girl, this thesis willstudy subtitles translation of the US TV series from the perspective of the AdaptationTheory, trying to prove that the Adaptation Theory has a strong explanatory power fortranslation.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction, which mainlypresents the research purpose, research methodology and the structure of this paper. Thesecond chapter of this thesis is literature review, introducing the research background andthe previous and present studies of Gossip Girl as well as subtitles translation in details.Chapter three is the framework of the Adaptation theory. In this part, the author presentsthe Adaptation Theory and its application to translation. At the beginning of Chapter four,subtitles translation and Gossip Girl are introduced. Then based on the fifth season ofGossip Girl, the author analyzes the subtitle translation from the angle of the AdaptationTheory, proving that it is possible to apply the Adaptation Theory into subtitles translation.The last chapter concludes the whole thesis. Through the study of subtitles translation ofGossip Girl, we know that the adaptation theory possesses strong explanatory power andapplication, but it cannot explain all language phenomena in subtitles translation. It stillneeds to be further studied. The author pointed out some limitations of this paper. Then afew suggestions about the subtitles translation of the foreign TV series are listed.