Research On The English-Chinese Translation Of Subtitles In Mainland And Taiwan Version Of Avatar

Movies are an important means of mass media. They enrich people’s spare-time activities and bring countries of the world closer to each other. Audiovisual products as a popular means of mass media have great influence on people’s lives. As an intercultural communication mode at a more rapid pace than ever in this century, the subtitle translation is playing a more and more important part in international communication. After entry into the21st century, English films have flooded into the Chinese film market and snatched a large share of China’s film market. However, because of inadequate research on film translation, film translation is in great demand for theoretical guidance, and mistranslations in this field sometimes happen. Thus, there is an urgent need for production of some guidelines on English-Chinese subtitling.Avatar is an American science fiction movie which was directed by James Cameron who spent more than10years creating this masterpiece. This film won dozens of film prizes, and its box office reached2.5billion US dollars, which is the top-grossing movie in history. And its box office only in China is well over1.4billion yuan RMB. Its great success in the China film market and the greatest popularity in China are due to the success of the subtitle translation. This thesis adopts Avatar as the object of study and does a case study. The author uses Henrik Gottlieb’s tightrope translation strategies as the theoretical foundation and at the same time combines the theories of the domestic experts in subtitle translation to summarize the theories which are applicable to English-Chinese subtitle translation. By comparison of subtitle translation of Avatar between the subtitled versions of mainland China and Taiwan and through the case study, the author will conclude the translation strategies and the principles for English-Chinese subtitle translation. Hopefully, subtitlers will find these translation strategies and principles helpful in their translation practice.There are five chapters in this thesis.Chapter One is an introduction, includes the research background, objectives and significance of the study, methodology and thesis structure. As a branch of translation studies, subtitle translation has not drawn much attention in our country. Though there are more and more domestic scholars who pay close attention to it, it has not had its own theoretical system. This thesis will only focus on English-Chinese subtitle translation. As for the popular topics in the field of international audiovisual translation studies, such as differences between dubbing and subtitling, adoption of dubbing or subtitling and so on, the thesis will only introduce them without further discussion.Chapter Two is the literature review. It is divided into three sections. In the first section, the author presents the definitions to subtitling studies, and then gives a brief historical overview of the development of film subtitle, she also concludes the classifications of subtitling. In the second section, the author analyzes its features and constraints of subtitling. In the last section, the author reviews the studies both at home and abroad in this field.Chapter Three discusses the theoretical framework of this study. It discusses the tightrope subtitle translation strategies put forward by Henrik Gottlieb and the theories of the domestic subtitle translation experts including Qian Shaochang, Ma Zhengqi, Li Yunxing and Zhang Chunbai. The author makes corrections and complements for the strategies in these theories in order to adapt them to English-Chinese subtitling practice.Chapter Four is the theoretical illustration. It is divided into two sections. Section One is the introduction to Avatar, which has introduced the film and the reason for adopting it as the case to study. In Section Two, the author compares the two subtitled versions of mainland China and Taiwan to illustrate the strategies in Gottlieb’s theory and the principles will be summarized. The author also gives a conclusion of the comparison the subtitles in two versions. By analyzing and comparing, the author provides subtitlers with some suggestion in their future translation practice.The last chapter summarizes the findings and limitations in this research and makes recommendations for further study.