| Each year, China’s cinemas will import a number of blockbusters from abroad. In2012, the number is55, twenty-seven percent higher than the formal year. At the same time, the number of movies come into domestic market through other channels, such the Internet, are much higher. Internet has become an important, or even a major channel to watch movies. According to a survey I did among121young college students, more than seventy percent of them choose to watch movies on the Internet, and most of them prefer subtitling to dubbing. But many people found that the subtitles of many movies are terrible, sometimes are totally unable to be understood. How to produce efficient and sound subtitle has become a major concern among subtitle translators.Subtitle is usually placed at the bottom of the picture and is either centered or left-aligned, consisting of one or two lines of an average maximum length of35characters. Furthermore, according to The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, a single-line subtitle may appear on screen for as little as two seconds. It is difficult for audience to digest a long and nagging line of subtitles. When translating the subtitle, the translator should take the space and time constraints into consideration.Pulp Fiction is a popular Hollywood movie which was directed by a talented director, Quentin Jerome Tarantino. It is considered as an "epic" post-modern movie which holds its distinctive features. This thesis presents a case study of Pulp Fiction, and tends to analyze major problems in subtitle translation, the causes of the problems and the feasibility of Functional Equivalence Applied to Subtitle translation.Recently many scholars at home and abroad cast their eyes to subtitle translation. In1992, Ivarsson, Europe subtitle researcher published his Subtitling for the Media:Handbook of an art, which was considered as the first monograph related to subtitle. Since1995, subtitle translation has experienced rapid development in the West. Scholars like Gambier and Henrik Gottlieb, who are considered as the leaders in subtitle translation, have made great progress in subtitle translation strategies, classification of the movie translation methods, etc. In China, many translators and scholars have made big progress too. Professor Zhang Chunbai has analyzed some of the basic characteristics of TV drama and the nature, principles and techniques of subtitle translation, which are corresponded to Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory.Nida’s theory is based on his studies on the translation of Bible. He believes that translation is to use the most close, natural equivalence to reproduce the original text. The readers reaction to the translation is a measure of the degree of the scale of functional equivalence. Translation serves for readers, if we want to judge the merits of translation quality, we must check the reader’s reflection to the translation. He suggested in his work that a variety of languages are equally expressive, we have to respect the characteristics of each language in the process of translation. Some linguistic phenomena cannot be translated, so we have to sacrifice the form of the ST to save its content.The thesis is composed of three chapters. Chapter One is the author’s study on movie subtitle translation. Chapter Two is a case study of the subtitle of Pulp Fiction; the author discusses the features and problems of the subtitle translation of the movie, and tries to analyze the causes of the problems. In this chapter, the author uses a lot of examples taken from the subtitle translation of the movie, points out some mistakes or shortcomings and provides with her own translation. Chapter Three is the key Chapter. According to the research results of Chapter Two, the purpose of subtitle translation is to let the audience of the subtitled movie respond to it in substantially the same manner as the audience of the original version of the movie, which is in accordance with the core of Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory. This Chapter is dealing with the feasibility of Functional Equivalence Applied to Subtitle translation, and the purpose, principles and techniques of subtitle translation.How to judge the current status of the domestic movie subtitle translation and how to solve the common problems in subtitle translation is the core of this thesis. Through the perspective of pragmatic translation, the author tries to find the roots of the problems in subtitle translation, discuss the ways to solve these problems through case study and analyses, and to summarize how to produce high-quality translation of subtitle. |
PDF Full Text Request