Research On The Subtitle Translation Of The Last Emperor From The Perspective Of Cultural Translation Theory

China has a long translation history and has formed its own system of translation theories. However, film translation is a brand-new area of translation. With the continuous development of film industry, films have played an important role in enriching people’s cultural life. Moreover, they not only entertain the general public but also undertake a significant mission to promote cultural communication and exchanges between different cultures as well.Subtitle translation has a close connection to cross-cultural studies. As is known to all of us, language and culture are closely related to each other. Language is the carrier of culture and culture is the soil of language. Therefore, a good translation not only involves language but also considers cultural elements. Since films are regarded as a form of cultural exchange, its subtitle translation needs to cover both the cultural level and the linguistic level. Film subtitle translation does not just refer to the language transfer, but to a great extent, it is constrained by the requirements of target culture. In addition, compared with other forms of translation, film subtitle translation has to be limited to time and space. For the source language, many words, expressions and some particular linguistic forms with strong cultural color cannot find a complete equivalent in the target language. All the factors above result in the difficulty of film subtitle translation.In this thesis, The last Emperor is used as the object of study and cultural translation theory is applied as the theoretical basis for this study, with Lawrence Venuti’s cultural translation strategies as a supplement. The film was a huge success in the Western world, and had received worldwide acclaim. However, it aroused controversy after being released in China. Excluding other external factors, the subtitling of this film may be one of the reasons for weakening the interest of the Chinese audience. So, the author of this thesis chooses the218-minute full edition of the film as the research material of subtitling, analyzing the translation strategies the translator has adopted. Still in this thesis, a tentative study is made to find out whether the translation strategies are appropriate for the target language audiences, namely Chinese viewers.Due to the fact that the target readers of the subtitled film are Chinese audiences, the author of this thesis suggests that the translator is supposed to adopt the domestication strategy to translate Chinese culture-specific lines, such as the expressions used in the Qing imperial court and well-known words of ancient Chinese sages. Domestication can also be employed to deal with cultural humors and puns in the film. However, the Western elements in the film should be translated through the foreignization strategy, such as the lines of Johnston who was Puyi’s teacher, because he was an Englishman. In a word, translators should pay attention to the Chinese audiences’acceptability and make positive use of their creativity to achieve the maximum cultural functional equivalence between Chinese and English. This can help the Chinese audiences get the same or similar feelings as the English ones, truly transmitting English cultural information and reaching the aim of cultural exchanges.