Translating Subtitles With Chinese Culture-loaded Words During The "Cultural Revolution"

Nowadays, communications between China and other foreign countries have grown increasingly. The movie has turned into a tool of cultural dissemination other than merely an entertainment. Movies of Chinese characteristics are not only for amusement, but also serve as windows for foreigners to know Chinese customs and to promote cultural communication. So, a high quality translation of subtitles with culture-loaded words plays a vitally important role in reducing misunderstanding caused by different regions, cultures as well as languages.Based on Cultural Translation Theory put up by Susan Bassnett, the thesis chooses subtitles of two movies on the background of the "Cultural Revolution", namely Under the Hawthan Tree and Coming Home which are directed by Zhang Yimou as the corpus. The thesis takes their special cultural factors into consideration in order to explore the cultural equivalence in translating subtitles with Chinese culture-loaded words and find out commonly used translation strategies as well as some translation problems. The thesis finds that movies with Chinese characteristics have become a short-cut for foreign audience to learn about Chinese specific culture, and their subtitles with Chinese culture-loaded words reflect various cultural connotations. Susan Bassnett's Cultural Translation Theory focuses on equivalence in culture transplantation. So culture is the first thing in translation. In fact, translating subtitles with Chinese culture-loaded words is to find colloquial expressions for the target audience to have better understanding. Only in this way can translators exactly and authentically convey the implied meaning of the specific culture in the movie. The thesis studies the subtitles with Chinese culture-loaded words so as to fill in gaps in the relevant researches and to make some contribution to cultural translation studies. The thesis is of practical value to guide the translation practice.