On C-E Translation Of Film Subtitles From The Perspective Of Cultural View On Translation

Chinese culture should be transmitted to the whole world, which is not only a requirement of the time, but also a demand of the great rejuvenation of Chinese nation. With the deepening of international communications, the film culture exchange between China and foreign countries has been increasing gradually. However, despite the rapid development of Chinese films industry, the popularity of Chinese films overseas is much smaller than the popularity of American films in China. One of the reasons for it is the problems of C-E subtitle translation that plays an important role in the intercultural communication of films.The culture issue in translation has been a hot issue in translation field. Because of the constraints of time and space, many problems of culture descrepancy and culture misunderstanding appear, which makes subtitle translation even more complicated. The thesis takes Zhang Yimou (张艺谋)’s ten prized films as examples to discuss culture information connoted in the source text in details, like regional common sayings, customs, religious and cultural beliefs, dietetic cultures and Chinese sayings culture, and analyze the culture publicity barriers caused by those cultural factors in the process of C-E subtitle translation from the perspective of cultural view on translation. Moreover, the thesis points out the improper translation in the target text and briefly raises strategies to solve the problems.The thesis chooses Zhang Yimou’s ten prized films as cases to do a systematic and deep research. First of all, based on the former subtitle translation researches, the thesis introduces researching background, theoretical framework and innovations of the thesis, then makes an overview of present research situations of subtitle translation, and later briefly summarizes the characteristics of Zhang Yimou’s films, and last raises the values of the thesis study. Second, based on the theoretical basis, the thesis presents an overview to the generation of cultural view on translation, Susan Bassnett’s cultural view on translation, and the practical significance of cultural view on translation. And the thesis also offers a summary of Zhang’s films winning overseas prizes and their cultural categorization, dividing the ten films into four cultural categories, namely category of feudal society culture, rural areas life culture, ancient costume swordsman culture and modern social phenomena culture. At last, from the perspective of cultural view, the thesis gives a case study of cultural connotations analysis and discussions of target translation in dealing with cultural factors of regional common sayings, custom, religious and cultural belief, dietetic culture and Chinese sayings culture in the ten films the thesis chose. It raises some simple solutions to solve cultural problems in the subtitle translation. They are techniques of addition, reduction, and strategies of domestication and foreignization.