Functional Equivalence In C/E Translation Of Film Subtitles

In this thesis, a comparative study on the the source and target texts of Feng Xiaogang’s film Aftershock was conducted under the guidance of Eugene Nida’s theory of functional equivalence. The aim in this thesis is investigate the strategies the subtitler used to deal with the cultural terms, temporal and spatial constraints when subtitling Aftershock and to see whether functional equivalence was achieved in the translation. The ultimate purpose of this study is to find the existing problems in subtitling so that suggestions can be given to improve the quality of translated subtitles in the future.In his book collaborated with Taber, Nida defined functional equivalence as "the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message"(Nida&Taber,2001, p.12). In this study, the author assessed the translation against two factors:accuracy (closeness or faithfulness to the original) and the ease of comprehension (whether the translation is natural and fluent). Close analysis of the source and target texts yields the following findings.A. To cope with the temporal and spatial constraints, the subtitler employed the strategy of reduction (condensation, reductive paraphrasing and deletion):the subtitler kept the information that is most relevant to the development of plots and what is not so essential for readers’ understanding of the film was condensed or deleted. When dealing with the cultural elements (namely those elements that relates to Chinese history, society and traditions) and intralinguistic culture-bound references (puns, idioms, dialects and proverbs, etc.) the subtitler mainly used the the following three techniques: paraphrase, substitution, omission/deletion. B. Generally speaking, a mininal level of equivalence is achieved in the translated text. The language is understandable and life-like, with a high degree of readability, so the English audience can conceive of how the original recipients understand and appreciate the film. But they can not appreciate it in essentially the same way as the Chinese audience do as there are still some problems that may cause misunderstanding or confusion among the viewers. The problems found fall into two groups:the first group is problems of naturalness (the treatment of interrogative questions, appellation words and greetings) and the seond group is problems of faithfulness (accuracy or closeness).C. The author thought that there are some general principles of subtitling:first, conetxt is the most important factor that determines which is the most prominent or important meaning of a linguistic sign, subtitlers should be fully aware of the significance of context and take context into consideration when deciding the wordings of his/her translation. Second, subtitlers should follow the principle of "relevance" when using reduction:all plot-carrying information that are essential for viwers to follow the story but not recoverable from other channels (non-verbal auditory channel and non-verbal visual channel) must be loyally rendered. Third, subtitlers should always take the target audience (their educational level, knowledge of the source culture, their reading speed, etc.) into consideration. Generally speaking, the languages are expected to be colloquial:to enhance readability, words are expected to be short and simple; commonly used syntatic structures are preferred than prestigious structures. Last but not least, it is necessary to standardize the procedures of subtitling:training programs should be given to subtitlers to improve their skills, and a reviewing system must be established to check the translated subtitles for mistakes.Despite some limitations, the present study has both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, it adopted Nida’s theory of functional equivalence into the field of subtitle translation. Practically, this study conveys and classifies the existing problems in subtitling and presents some general principles of subtitle translation under the guidance of the theory.