On Subtitle Translation Of Man In BlackⅢ:a Perspective Of Reception Theory

Since May25,2012the film Man in Black III was put on the Chinese cinemas, whose subtitle translation caused heated debate among the audiences.There are many catchwords from the internet such as "illegal cooking oil"," lean meat powder"," trick dad","cannot hold","be prone to getting hurt" etc and famous lines of ancient Chinese poems coming out of the mouth of the black suit man. The audiences have different opinions on such translation. Some think it is a good translation because it seems closely related to their daily life and "entertain" them a lot; while others think it is a "mistranslation", failing to reflect the original style of the film. Nevertheless, such translation has changed the image of official subtitling translation. As a potential market for films, China attracts great attention from abroad. In recent years in order to attract more Chinese audiences, the subtitles of more and more imported films were translated in this "down to earth" manner, and Man in Black Ⅲ is a typical example. Is it good or not?Using two translated subtitling version of Man in Black III (JiaXiuyan’s translation as the distributor’s translation and the YYets’translation as the network-based one) as the samples for this study, this thesis attempts to explore the acceptability and expectability of the audiences towards film subtitle translation from the perspective of the Reception Theory. It compares and analyzes the choice of diction in the two versions as a result of the different linguistic styles and translation strategies adopted, and reaches the following conclusions: Both network translation and distributor’s translation have their merits. The former, which tends to employ literal translation or word by word translation method, is faithful to the original text. While the latter puts the audience in the first place, uses domestication approach and omission to better retain the humorous effect of the original film. Second, the audience’s acceptance, their horizon of expectation, and the social background, economic elements, cultural difference of the film all are influential factors to the choice of translation strategy. Third, the official version has made an effort to help the audiences understand the film, it is a new approach that should be encouraged, but not all the films can be translated in the same way, it depends on the style of the film.The author hopes this thesis can contribute to some extent to film subtitling translation, and attract the scholar’s interest in this field so as to improve the quality of film subtitle translation.