A Study On Film Subtitle Translation Of "Shawshank Redemption" From The Perspective Of Translation Norms Theory

This is a study of film subtitle translation,focusing on film subtitle features and translation strategies from English to Chinese.In recent years,foreign audiovisual products have become increasingly popular among Chinese audiences.What contributed to that are not only the appeals of their exciting stories but also qualified film subtitles.Generally,subtitle is not only the carrier of information in the film,but also a bridge for cross-cultural exchanges.It plays a crucial role in introducing the background of the film story,promoting the development of the film plot and highlighting the personality of film characters.What's more,a film with successful subtitle translation could help audiences not only to understand Chinese and Western cultures while enjoying movies,but also to eliminate economic,political and religious barriers,and thus stimulating the interest of foreign language learners,broadening their cultural horizons and promoting English learning.This paper studies the subtitle translation norms of English films in light of Toury's descriptive translation analysis and takes Shawshank Redemption as an example.Through the comparison between the original novel text and the English subtitle text,the English subtitle text and the Chinese subtitle text,several general characteristics of the source subtitle and the translated subtitle are summarized.On this basis,comparative analysis was adopted to explore the translator's strategies used in the subtitle translation,in order to analyze the translation methods applied by the translators.We find that,the source subtitles are colloquialism,synchronized and with time-and-space limitation,while the translated subtitles are concise,alternative and with cultural specificity.In view of the features of these subtitles,according to the relevant theories of translation norms,some corresponding translation strategies such as domestication and foreignization,omission,conversion and rewriting are proposed.Therefore,translation norms theory has both theoretical and the practical value in film subtitle translation.