A Study Of Subtitles Translation Of Animation Films From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

With the world economic integration and the rapid development of global film industry, as one of the most popular form of communication in different countries, movie has played an important and irreplaceable role in the intercultural communication. Therefore, the translation of movie subtitles is attracting more and more attention from translators and the audiences. The movie subtitles translation not only serves as a bridge of cultural communication in a foreign movie, but also affects the film’s box office and reputation directly. As a result, the quality of film subtitles translation is becoming a question which is worth exploring very much. However, the subtitles translation studies in China currently are relatively falling behind. Study on film subtitles translation is far inadequate compared with the study of literary translation. There is still much room to improve in the practice of film subtitles translation and its guiding theories.German Functionalist Skopostheorie can be valued as an outstanding breakthrough in traditional translation theory, which has provided a bright new perspective for the study of film subtitles translation. According to Skopostheorie, translation can be regarded as a purposeful activity. Skopostheorie has not only abandoned faithfulness and equivalence principle from the traditional translation theory but also extended the study of translation from the linguistic domain to the larger intercultural communication context, thus greatly expanding the horizon of translation theory studies. Under the limitations of time and space, the movie subtitles translation should attract audience’s interest, convey the development of the movie plot, and arouse resonance of the audience to the maximum for its specific purpose. Therefore, when the audiences from the specific culture background are appreciating the film, they will have a better comprehension of the movie plot. Since the subtitles translation of a film is a dynamic and comprehensive process which is influenced by many facets, the translator should consider all the possible factors related to the skopos of translation practice, so as to realize the expected specific skopos.This paper conducts a tentative exploration on film subtitles translation with the case study of the Pixas movie Monsters University. The paper, based on the analysis of the features of the animation films, explores the subtitles translation purpose, translation principles and translation strategies of the animation films from the perspective of Skopostheorie.It is found that the film subtitles translation under the guidance of Skopostheorie can give the translators more flexibility. The purpose of animation subtitles translation is to realize the producer’s commercial intent, the communicative purpose of subtitles translation and audience’s expectation. In consideration of the animation’s own characteristics, animation’s subtitles translation should follow the Brevity Principle, the Fidelity Principle, and the Popularity Principle. As Monsters University is a comedy animation, the film cast and crew use a lot of humorous clips and popular languages. In order to make the Chinese audience appreciate the charm from the source language to the maximum, the translator of this film uses flexible translation strategies in the translation process, including "Adaption", "Addition", "Paraphrase", "Adopting four-character phrase and Chinese idioms", and "Adopting of internet buzzwords as literal and free translation" to achieve the purpose of subtitles translation.It is hoped that the research can enhance the degree of concern to the study of film subtitles translation in the translation domain, and film subtitles translation will reach its full potential in promoting the Chinese and western cultural exchange through the study.