The Film Kungfu Panda’ Subtitle Translation: Functional Equivalence Perspective

The translation of film subtitles has become a more and more important field asthe globalization of economy and culture is increasingly developed in the new century.Good subtitles can enhance the audiences’ experience of appreciating films and makethe culture communication more effective. Although films are of great importancenowadays, researches concerning this field are far from being satisfactory. Comparedwith traditional translation researches, subtitle translation theory is still not matureand systematic. Therefore, the author of this thesis focuses on the subtitle translationstudy and tries to put forward some strategies that can guide subtitle translationpractice.This thesis is composed of five parts.The first chapter is the introduction, presenting the research background and thematerial that is to be used. Compared with dubbing, subtitling is the way preferred bymost people.The second chapter is literature review. It starts with definitions and differenttypes of subtitling and the technical constraints of it. In the following part, studies onthe subtitling in China and abroad are introduced and major contributions by differentscholars and the significances are listed out.The third chapter introduces Nida’s functional equivalence and explains thetheoretical application of it in English-Chinese subtitling. According to Nida, thesuccess of translation should be evaluated by the criterion that the impact of the targetlanguage on the target language reader should be the same as the impact of the sourcelanguage on the source language reader. And in film translation, the target audience’sreaction to the target text is very decisive for the success of a film translation, whichhappens to have the same view with functional equivalence. Therefore, it is rathersuitable to apply this theory to the study of film subtitling.The fourth chapter is how functional equivalence is applied in film subtitletranslation. Addition, reduction, creative translation and literal translation, etc. are alluseful strategies in subtitle translation studies.The last chapter is the conclusion. The author gives a summary as well aslimitation of the study in this chapter.Watching foreign films is a popular and effective way of accessing to foreign cultures. However, in China, subtitle translation has not attracted so much academicattention as it deserves and few theories could be paid to the translation of subtitlesand make films more effective in the communication of cultures.