A Study On Sitcom Subtitling Translation From The Perspective Of German Functionalist Translation Theory

It’s an era of multimedia today, communication between different cultures is less complicated. It’s well-known that movies, TV shows, talk shows, mainstream media are vital carriers of human culture, which enjoy a big crowd of audience, lasting spread over time. Because the language is authentic, some English learners prefer taking this as learning material. At the same time, the rapid development of technology makes popular dramas and TV shows rapidly spread in the network. For avoiding exchange impediment, some subtitling translation groups emerge, and a new form of translation-----subtitling translation is invented, which, though, deserves more attention. In the mainland, this assignment has been completed by the people who generally get together due to the same hobbies. Because the management system of the subtitle-making group is not complete, and translators’different levels, some subtitle translation is not satisfactory, even some language misunderstandings, for there is no theoretical guidance and corresponding translation assessment guidance.Among the American sitcoms that mainstream websites compete to seize for the click-through rate, The Big Bang Theory gets, in the shortest time, steadily increased ratings, since its broadcast. Characters have prominent personalities, distinct linguistic characteristics. Through investigations, the target audience are mostly college students (including postgraduates and doctoral candidates) and white-collars, who are well-educated and willing to accept western culture. They expect to know the real American life with the help of subtitles, and understand its humor to relax themselves, which requires the translation should have distinctive characteristics and demonstrate the humor.German functionalist translation theory is taken as the research base for the study, referring to the most popular American scene The Big Bang Theory as case study, taking descriptive method in the study. This research will firstly analyze subtitling translation from the perspective of Skopos theory, combined the textual feature, through a combination of the principles and methods. Assessing the realization of various textual functions in the translation intends to illustrate the functional translation theory that could be applied in the subtitling translation of the foreign films and TV dramas, and provide a perspective for the translation assessment and a detailed guidance on the the subtitle translation activities and related research. The first chapter will introduce the research motive, background, significance, methods as well as the entire paper body. The second chapter summarizes the history of relative researches at home and abroad for functionalist theory and subtitling translation. The third chapter reviews the subtitling theory and functionalist translation theory, to lay the theoretical foundation for the whole research. The fourth chapter will carry out the detailed analysis of the principles and strategies of the functionalist translation theory, pointing out the translation examples’merits and demerits. During the material collection, the author finds out that the subtitle translators would like to process the source text as their own will. To complete the translation, they usually apply condensation, clarification, domestication and foreignization. Especially in the domestication, they use many popular network words, buzzwords, idioms and slangs, which make the the translation more lively and humorous. At this point, the functional translation theory is proven its applicability in subtitle translation. And the audience could understand the humorous effects soon. The fifth chapter is the conclusion.