On Compliments Translation In Subtitle From The Perspective Of Speech Act Theory

Currently, English movies and TV series have become the window for Chinese to learn more about the world. However, language barriers and culture differences lead target audience unable to thoroughly understand the dialogues in the TV series. As a form of language transfer, subtitling plays an extremely important role in appreciating the plot. Compliments, as “social lubricants”, can be used to establish social solidarity and harmony between speakers. But compliments are also culturally-constrained speech acts, and different cultural backgrounds between China and America will lead to the different applications of compliments. The appropriate translating of compliments can help target audience appreciate the plot. The author tries exploring subtitling methods of compliments and examining whether the subtitled compliments appropriately convey the illocutionary meaning of the source text in Desperate Housewives from the perspective of speech act theory.The 963 compliments selected from the first,third,fifth and seventh season of Desperate Housewives are classified into four categories: overt compliments(70%), covert compliments(13%), dishonest compliments(14%) and compliments addressed to a third party(3%). Firstly, the author analyzes the translation methods of all the collected compliments, and summarizes the methods mainly adopted methods in translating different types of compliments with the aid of data statistics; and then the author investigates whether the subtitled compliments achieve the same illocutionary meaning that the original speakers try to convey.Based on the statistical analysis of the data, the conclusions of the thesis can be drawn as follows: firstly, the subtitler tends to apply different methods in translating different types of compliments. The illocutionary meaning of overt compliments is easier to understand by viewers, so the subtitler mainly adopts literal translation method. The illocutionary meaning of covert compliments is more difficult to understand for viewers, so the subtitler mainly adopts paraphrase, cultural substitution, addition and specification methods. The illocutionary meaning of dishonest compliments and compliments addressed to a third party are relatively more complicated, so the methods adopted are more diverse, such as literal translation, paraphrase, condensation and specification. Secondly, on the whole, literal translation is the most frequently applied method, accounting for 61.5%; the other five methods are used much less frequently, including paraphrase(16%), condensation(8%), addition(5%), cultural substitution(4.5%) and specification(5%). As for the illocutionary meaning the compliments achieve, 88.5 percent of compliments convey the same illocutionary meaning as the original ones do; 11.1 percent of them in the target strengthen the illocutionary meaning; and only 0.4 percent of them weaken the illocutionary meaning. Overall, the subtitling of the majority of compliments conveys the equivalent illocutionary meaning.