A Study Of ’Mulan’ Dialogue Translation From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

Recent years more and more foreign movies have been introduced into China, there is an increasing need in movie translations. The study of movie translation should have deserved much more concern than what it has gained now. When compared with other creative arts, like literature, movie has become an influential modern art. Movie can affect lives of people from all ranks and classes. From the last60years, Chinese movie translating industry has got great achievements. A great number of foreign movies have been introduced into China, and our professional translators have translated them into Chinese. There are many famous films translated into Chinese by the translators, such as, The Bridges of Madison County, the Sound of Music, Gone with the Wind and Titanic. In the past, literary translation has developed in an amazing speed, but movie translation doesn’t gained increasing development. In the21century, movie translation is becoming regarded by Chinese audience and the art of dubbing and subtitling has become a special art in China.This thesis attempts to apply Nida’s functional equivalence theory to the movie translation, and to study the strategy and skills on how to make a sound and fluent movie translation. Between Dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence, Nida prefers to the former, indicating that he treats translation from the point of view of the receptors. Dynamic equivalence theory is one of Nida’s major contributions to the study of translation theory. It has been widely used to guide translation practice. The comparison of understanding and appreciation between the original language receptors and the target language receptors is related to functional equivalence. And the degree of equivalence and difference in comparison is an important issue to study from the perspective of functional equivalence."Translation consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style."(Nida and Taber,1969:12) This definition of functional equivalence points out that the nature, task, method and the standards of translation. In Nida’s opinion a translation must serve its receptors. Hence, Nida’s functional equivalence theory suits movie translation well and could be used as a guideline on movie translation.The thesis is organized in five chapters. Chapter one presents the relevant background of the research as well as the research aims. In this chapter, the writer also makes clear the reason for data collection and research approach employed. The second chapter is a review of studies on audio-visual translation at home and abroad, including some important figures and their works, as well as some journals which provide a friendly platform for research articles of this field. In chapter three, the author introduced Nida’s functional equivalence theory. Then the features of functional equivalence theory have been formulated, focusing on the principles of functional equivalence and the classifications of functional equivalence. And the author also analyzes the necessity to apply functional equivalence in translation. Chapter four contains a case study of the cartoon movie Mulan. Firstly, the plot of this film is given at the beginning of this chapter. The second part is the detailed analysis of Mulan dialogue translation strategies that are divided into three classifications. The thesis ends with chapter five in which the writer concludes the major findings as well as limitations of the study.