A Report On The Translation Of Friends

The author is fond of American TV series, especially Friends. Since the currenttranslation of subtitles is not so satisfying, the author decides to retranslate the subtitles.Friends describes the life of six friends in New York, including the development of theirrelationships. This part of translation is the first four series, which describe how they sixnumbers get together and begin to know each other. This part is the foundation of thefollowing conflicts and has great significance in the whole play.Before translation, a lot of preparations are made, such as getting familiar with the playand the personalities of the characters. With the help of the internet and books, the authorunifies the translations of the names of people, places and proper nouns. All thesepreparations lay a solid foundation for the translation work.This is the translation of subtitles, whose priority is given to the spoken dialogue of thecharacters. The effect of humor in the play is reflected in the humor of the dialogue, whichinclude puns, word games and so on. These language phenomena make translation muchharder than one can think. So the author chooses the principle of functional equivalence as thetranslation guidance to make audience fully appreciate the humor of the play. In the60s and70s of the20thcentury, the American theorist Eugene Nina introduces the theory of functionalequivalence in his first series of works. As an important breakthrough and supplement intraditional translation theory studies, functional equivalence has offered a new perspective forresearch of subtitle translation. On one hand, the grammar, usage and ways of expressing oflanguage are different from each other, while their functions are similar. Functionalequivalence emphases on semantic function of an equivalence instead of the surface of a rigidlanguage equivalence. On the other hand, there are three criteria to judge the quality of the translation text:1. The target readers can understand the original text.2. It is easy andexpressive for understanding.3. Be attractive to the readers. Most languages in subtitletranslation are dialogue and the langue is plain, while it’s difficult to satisfy the third criterionunder the limited time and space.Therefore, the author needs to have good language competence, rich translation theoriesand skills, at the same time, he should have a correct attitude and responsibility. Only when atranslator owns these qualities, can the translation work be well accomplished.