A Study Of Madagascar3Subtitle Translation From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

With the development of global integration, there are more and more cultural exchanges and influences between countries.The increasing foreign films distribute to a worldwide area as a popular means of mass media, Chinese audiences have a lot of opportunities to approach and appreciate foreign films. As a result of cultural and the language difference, the Chinese audiences are not necessarily grasp the themes and ideas of films. In order to make Chinese audiences accept and appreciate the foreign films better in the limited time, people pay much more attention to the study of film subtitle translation.The audiovisual product, as a cultural carrier and a major entertainment for. the general public, shoulders the significant task in promoting cultural exchange and cultural communication. Subtitle translation is no longer a simple language conversion between two languages. It should reflect the theme of film, the characteristics of characters, the culture of nation and values. As we know that subtitle translation is largely limited to the cultural needs, it is also limited by time and space. All of these constraints make the subtitle translation more difficult and complicated.At present, the subtitle translation of film is just a new field of translation. It has attracted more and more attentions and has made some very impressive researches in translation. Western translation focus on the field of film subtitle translation earlier, the theoretical research has developed much more widely and deeply than that in China, and formed some particular common views and standards in strategies, norms and quality control. While the domestic study of subtitle translation has fewer researches both in terms of quantity and quality. People pay little attention to this field in domestic study. The prosperity of the movies of movie industry is in sharp contrast with the poor quality of subtitling, which will hinder the audience from appreciating the film and make the cultural communication less effective. In theory, film subtitle translation has received little scholarly attention. In practice, the quality of film subtitle translation is yet to be improved. It is imperative to improve the quality of subtitle translation. The focus in this paper is how to find the breakthrough point of improving the quality of subtitle translation.This thesis makes an attempt to provide a case study of the English-Chinese subtitle translation of Madagascar3from the perspective of Skopostheorie. Considering the subtitle translation as an interpersonal interaction, an intercultural action, a text-processing action and a purposeful action, at the same time taking the director’s and the playwright’s intentions as well as the target readers’ expectations into consideration, the author analyzes typical examples chosen in the source text to check if the two fan subs have fulfilled certain Skopos.There are five chapters in this thesis:Chapter One introduces the research background, the research issues of subtitle translation and thesis structure. The last part of Chapter One involves the literary review of subtitle translation, introducing the basic characteristics of subtitle, and the previous studies worked out by scholars from abroad and domestic. Chapter Two presents the theoretical foundation-Skopostheorie. Chapter Three puts subtitle translation on Skopostheorie, to explore the objective and constraints of film subtitle translation, putting forward the application of Skopostheorie to the feasibility of subtitle translation. Chapter Four takes the annimation film Madagascar3as an example for case study to observe the particular problems to explain the feasibility of the Skopostheorie. The author analyzes the translation strategies in the film not only from the view of theintentions of the director but also from the expectation of audience. Chapter Five reaches a conclusion of the whole paper, giving an account of research limitations and blueprint of subtitle translation in future.This paper is an attempt to address the situation where the study of English-Chinese film subtitle translation has been done from the perspective of Skopostheorie. This study which mainly focuses on the principles and strategies of film subtitle translation is both theoretically and practically helpful. It is expected that more researchers and translators will devote their efforts to this area for deeper insights.