French Film Chinese Translation Study

Considering its role in cross-cultural communication, French films have served more than a supplement to other forms of literary works. Actually, it has become the most accessible one for the Chinese audience to understand French culture. Films and other audio-video sources are challenging the tradition position of novels and become an important bearer of culture and civilization.The thesis first reviews the history of French-Chinese film translation and discusses the technical and cultural factors affecting the film translation. Under the framework of the Interpretive Theory and adopting the text analysis method, the thesis then analyzes the characteristics of film language through the research of Chinese scripts of several representative French films. The present thesis serves two purposes. Firstly, the materials presented in the Literature Review may provide some first-hand evidence for future research in this area. Secondly, after the analysis of various elements affecting film translation, the author proposes some strategies and requirements of the film translation, hoping to contribute to our better understanding and application of film translation.As a widely welcomed form of audio-video literature, films have shown unprecedented advantages over other written literatures. The French films are window for Chinese audience to French culture.Although film translation shares some common principles with literary translation, as a special branch of literary translation, it faces challenges brought by its own special characteristics. Firstly, a film is different from a novel in that the latter has both enough time and space to portray the characters in a detailed way. So it demands briefness and explicitness. Secondly, due to the special characteristics of visual medium, the translator for dubbing is under a variety of constrains including lip synchrony, pause, stress, audience-friendly subtitles and etc.. Thirdly, different from the scene construction in a novel, the construction of a scene in a film is not purely dependent on the words, not on pictures as well. Therefore, the lines translation should not cause contradiction with scenes.Therefore, some techniques commonly adopted in literary translation are not suitable for film translation. For instance, adding notes in the films is not possible. The words, if not frequently used, will create difficulties to audience. The free translation may sometimes not match the pictures in the film.The thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter One reviews the history of French-Chinese film translation, which, according to the movie technology, is divided into two phases, with the first phase lasting from1949to1990s and the second starting from1990s. The author further points out that French films with more diversified themes are now being introduced to a larger Chinese audience through multiple medias. More amateur translators are involved in film translation.Chapter Two deals with the principles and strategies of the film translation. After an analysis of the features of film language, the author concludes that film translation is different from literary translation in that subtitling and dubbing, the two types of film translation, are restricted by a series of extra-linguistic constraints. These constrains include the limited space and time for presenting translation, the choice of words which the lip-sync dubbing largely depends on and etc. The "condensation strategy" is then proposed by the author to solve these problems in film translation.Chapter Three discusses the film translation from the perspective of intercultural communication. The author first addresses the important role foreign films play in the field of cultural exchange and mass communication in history, and then proposes that "image modification and reconstruction" strategy can be adopted to solve intercultural problems. The feasibility of this strategy is illustrated by a few examples.The author concludes that the following principles should be considered in the film translation. Firstly, translators should ensure naturalness, vividness and easy comprehensibility of the dialogues. Secondly, spoken language is strongly recommended. Thirdly, considering the limited space and time for presenting translation, the "condensation strategy" is suggested in both subtitling and dubbing. Fourthly, free translation strategy should be avoided in most cases because the cultural images are directly presented to the audience through video. Translators can use "image modification and reconstruction" strategy proposed in the present study to solve intercultural problems.