Research On Subtitle Translation Of Inception From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

With the development of globalization, China has a closer relationship with the western countries. More and more Chinese people can accept new things, including many foreign excellent movies, especially the American blockbuster, which gains great popularity among Chinese audience due to its various types, splendid plots as well as humorous languages. In order to make most people appreciate the foreign movies, dubbing and subtitle translation emerge. Moreover, an ever increasing number of Chinese people are getting familiar with English. They want to appreciate the movie with colloquial English. Under this circumstance, the subtitle translation of the foreign movies, instead of dubbing, becomes more popular in China. However, the quality of the subtitle translation cannot be guaranteed. There are no authoritative criteria about the subtitle translation. Some translators misinterpret what the scriptwriters want to express. In view of this case, the paper attempts to analyze the cases from the movie Inception in the light of Skopos Theory for the purpose of improving the quality of subtitle translation.According to the Skopos Theory, every translation action has its own purpose, which determines the translation methods and strategies that are to be employed in order to produce a functionally adequate result. Thus, before the translators begin their jobs, they must make sure the skopos of the translation action. Only after the skopos is determined, the translation work will be done smoothly. The second rule is the coherence rule which demands that the translated text should be intratextual coherent and acceptable in the target culture. The third rule is the fidelity rule which requires the translated text should be intertextual coherent. The relationship of these three rules is important. The fidelity rule is the subordinated to the coherence rule. The fidelity rule and the coherence rule are both subordinated to the skopos rule. These three rules play an important role in guiding the subtitle translation.Inception, directed by Christopher Nolan, achieves a great success around the world due to its splendid plots and admirable production. At the same time, the innovative themes and the brilliant performance of the actors also make the film to be a blockbuster. Consequently, much more attention has been drawn to the subtitle translation of this film. Therefore, this thesis will take Inception’s subtitles as a research object and study them from the perspective of Skopos Theory.In this thesis, the qualitative analysis method and case study method will be adopted. Based on the three rules in Skopos Theory, different translation strategies will be taken in the subtitle translation of the movie Inception. This thesis will draw the conclusion that the subtitle translation can be appropriately guided by the Skopos Theory with the analysis of the cases in Inception.