The Study On Subtitle Translation Of Desperate Housewives From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Nowadays with growing openness of countries all over the world, people become increasingly eager for foreign spiritual culture. As a carrier of foreign culture, the films and TV productions gradually come into people’s eyes, which leads to an urgent need for audiovisual translation, especially subtitle translation. The author hereby tries to study subtitle translation from the perspective of Adaptation Theory, in hope to offer certain experience for future research.According to Adaptation Theory, the use of language is a process of continuously making choices. The fact that the language user can make proper choices in the process of language use lies in the three properties of language:variability, negotiability and adaptability. Subtitle translation means a transformation between the source language and the target language. Under the guidance of Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory, it is also a process of language use, during which choices and adaptation are constantly made. Moreover, from a comprehensive angle of the combination of intra-linguistic structure and extra-linguistic context, the theory covers the shortage of the past theories. Thus, Adaptation Theory can provide a very good perspective for the study of subtitle translation.In order to be convincing, the author takes the hot American TV series Desperate Housewives as a case to study subtitle translation under the guidance of Adaptation Theory, analyzing it from linguistic aspect and communicative aspect. Linguistic adaptation includes the adaptation on phonological level, lexical level, syntactic level, discourse level and so on, while for communicative adaptation, three worlds are focused on:the mental world, the social world, and the physical world, including the affective and cognitive elements of the characters and the target spectators, and also other elements such as politeness, religions, social customs and conventions, etc. In the process of translating, the translator should ensure that his thinking operations and translating process are adapted to the cognitive environment of both the original script writer and the target viewers.