Exploration Into Subtitling Of Nonverbal Information

As globalization speeds up,Chinese films are expected not only to take more market shares in world screenland,but also to shoulder the great responsibility of introducing a splendid Chinese culture.Without proper subtitle translation,the messages involved in the movies will be difficult for audience to understand,so,subtitle translation plays a very important role in communication between different countries,however,people pay little attention to this field.The prosperity of movie industry is in sharp contrast with the poor quality of subtitling,which will hinder the audience from appreciating the film and make the cultural communication less effective.The quality of subtitling is yet to be improved.Subtitle translation or audio-visual translation belongs to multimodal and multimedial texts.Modes like languages,images,incidental music and sound effects can all produce meanings.The translator not only needs to translate verbal information,like dialogues,but also needs to try to translate messages carried by nonverbal information to reduce the cognitive burden of the target language audience when necessary.However,among the present studies of subtitle translation,the number of studies on nonverbal information is very small.Therefore,this thesis will focus on how to deal with nonverbal information so as to improve the quality of the subtitles.This thesis employs a descriptive approach and takes The Grandmaster as an example.By analyzing nonverbal information like,paralanguage,prefabricate orality and images The thesis summarizes the methods applied to achieve verbal transfer of nonverbal information,namely,addition,specification and reformulation and how the initial intentions of the film are achieved.There are altogether five parts in this thesis.The first part is introduction,including research background,research significance,research objectives,research questions,research methodology and the structure of the thesis.The second part is literature review,which covers a brief introduction about subtitles and prevenient studies at home and abroad.The third part is theoretical framework,mainly about nonverbal communication and nonverbal information.Relationships between subtitles and nonverbal information are also explained in this part.The fourth part is the case study on The Grandmaster and also the main body of this thesis.Significance of this movie,specific translation strategies like addition,specification and reformulation are all discussed here.The last part is conclusion.It summarizes major findings of this thesis and points out the shortcomings.Moreover,some tentative suggestions are brought forward towards future studies.