摘 要

电影从诞生之日起，就成为文化传播与交流的重要载体。随着全球化与电影事业的发展，作为非文学翻译和多媒体翻译的一部分，字幕翻译不论在国际上，还是在中国，受到越来越多的关注。

电影字幕的翻译受制于时间和空间的限制，因此如何通过简洁明了的语言表达出精准的意义一直以来都是翻译工作者的一大挑战。与文学翻译不同，专注字幕翻译领域的学者和作品很少，因此在中国并没有形成一套完整的研究体系。本篇论文讲采用奈达的功能对等理论，对冯小刚电影字幕的翻译进行研究，以期从语义，风格和文化对等的三个层面分析译者在翻译时采用的不同策略。具体来说，奈达的功能对等理论将翻译定义为：“翻译就是在译语中用最为贴切自然的对等语，首先在语义上，其次在风格上再现源语的信息。”因此在翻译过程中，当内容与形式发生冲突时，内容具有优先权。该理论重视的是读者的感受，而这一点与电影字幕翻译的要求不谋而合。电影翻译工作者不仅是使阅读译文的观众明白导演或作者的意图，更应该使译文观众在欣赏电影时得到与母语观众相同或相似的感受。

关键词：字幕翻译；功能对等理论；翻译策略

Abstract

Since its emergence, the film has become an important carrier of culture and a critical way of communication. Correspondingly, with progress of the globalization and development of the film industry, subtitle translation, as a vital part of non-literary translation and audiovisual translation, gets wide attention from both China and the world.

Since the film subtitle translation has space and time constraints, it has always been a challenge for translators to demonstrate the source text in a brief form. Compared with literary translation, there are less scholars and theories in the field of the subtitle translation. Therefore, subtitle translation has not been a complete theoretical system in China until now. This paper will use Nida’s functional equivalence to analyze the subtitle translations of Feng Xiaogang’s films. The paper is going to analyze the different translation strategies in terms of semantic, stylistic and culture equivalence. More specifically, Translation is described as the “closet natural equivalent to the source language message” from perspective of functional equivalence. Therefore, when there is a conflict between meaning and form in the process of translating, the meaning has priority. It emphasizes on the responses of the readers, which is consistent with the standard of subtitle translation. A good subtitle translator not only has to make the audiences understand the meaning of directors or authors, but also should help the audiences enjoy the films like the native audiences.

Key words: subtitle translation; functional equivalence theory; translation strategies

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 3

2.1 A General Introduction of Subtitle Translation 3

2.2 Researches of Subtitle Translation at Abroad and Home 3

3 A General Introduction of Functional Equivalence Theory 7

3.1 Basic Concepts of Functional Equivalence Theory 7

3.2 Application of Functional Equivalence Theory 9

4 Functional Equivalence Theory in Subtitle Translation of Feng Xiaogang’s comedies 10

4.1 Features of Feng Xiaogang’s Comedy 10

4.2 Synopsis of A World Without Thieves, Personal Tailor And If You Are The One 10

5 Detailed Analysis of Translation Strategies of Feng Xiaogang’s Comedies 12

5.1 Semantic Equivalence 12

5.2 Stylistic Equivalence 13

5.3 Culture Equivalence 15

6 Conclusion 19

References 20

Acknowledgements 21

On Subtitle Translation of Feng xiaogang’s Films from Perspective of Functional Equivalence theory

1 Introduction

Nobody believed that film would become an elemental part of life when the film made by Lumiere Brothers in 1895. Although the starting of film industry in China trails western countries about half a century, it has made great achievements in film making journey. The Chinese films present the everlasting vitality of creativity and splendid culture to the world. However, most of Chinese films fail to attract wide attention from both the domestic and overseas audiences. While the major reason is barriers of culture and language, and the other is subtitle translation of film has not attracted enough attention.

Nowadays, the film translation for catering the appreciation value of audience changes its translation into a more popular and entertainment way. (Hu, 2012) There are many network vogue expressions in Chinese film. So translating the network vogue expressions into target language and making the foreign audiences receive humorous meanings are new challenges for film subtitling translators. What’s more, there are two translation strategies in translation, domestication and foreignization, translation among which domestication stresses bring the text closer to the culture of the implied readers or target-culture-oriented strategy. (Coles, 2012)

The paper uses Nida’s functional equivalence theory which is in accordance with requirements of subtitle translation, to study the subtitle translation. Subtitle, refers to a textual version of a film or television program’s dialogue that appears on screen. And subtitle translation is very popular with people who like watching foreign films or TV programs and foreign language learners. The earliest research of subtitle is started by some European scholars such as Henrik Gottlieb and Dollerup in 1950s. The current development of subtitle translation in China is still in a developing stage. Subtitle translation has not been an independent study filed since most of subtitle translation strategies and principles are concluded from practical experiences.

The paper has five chapters. Chapter One introduces the background and development film and film subtitle; Chapter Two introduces the subtitle and researches of subtitle translation in both China and abroad; Chapter Three lays a theoretical foundation for the paper. In Chapter Four, the paper mainly points out the application of functional equivalence in subtitle translation. Finally, Chapter Five is the conclusion part. Through the analysis, the instructive significance of functional equivalence for subtitle translation can be proved.

2 Literature Review

In this chapter, the paper will introduce researches of subtitle translation abroad and in China and and give a general introduction to subtitle which includes the definition, classification, constraints and the principles of translating subtitle.