论文总字数：31920字

摘 要

电影是21世纪最重要的文化传播手段之一，在世界文化传播和交流方面发挥着重要的作用。因此，影视字幕翻译的存在便成为了中外跨文化交流的必然结果。作为一种特殊的翻译形式，与传统翻译既有相似之处，但因其传播方式的不同，又有其特性。翻译是一种交际行为，目的在于传递交际意义。作为在国际口译界的第一个系统的口译理论，释意理论是口译实践和教学的基石。释意学派认为，译者通过自己的语言知识以及认知知识，能够把一种语言所表达的意义用另一种语言来表达出来，并使其与原语的意义与效果一致。本文从释意理论角度出发，以电影《海上钢琴师》的字幕翻译为例，着重分析释意理论在影视字幕翻译中的运用以及意义。

关键词：《海上钢琴师》；字幕翻译；释意理论

Contents

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………1
2. Literature Review…………………………………………………………1

2.1 An overview on interpretive theory……………………………………......1

2.2 A brief review on subtitle translation…………………………………..…....2

1. The Application of the Interpretive Theory in Subtitle Translation of the Film The Legend of 1900………………………………………………………4

3.1 Possibility of application of the interpretive theory in subtitle translation………………………………………………………....……….5

3.2 Subtitle translation in the film The Legend of 1900 from the perspective of the interpretive theory…………………………………..……………….………8

4. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………..11

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………...13

1. Introduction

Since the films came into being, they have became the main medium of cultural transmission, and played an important role in the cross-culture communication. As the domestic and foreign film industry continues to thrive, film subtitle translation has been more and more important(Baker 222). In recent years, a large number of foreign films have entered our country, people have a growing appetite for western movies. But because of the language and cultural barriers as well as the huge differences between China and the West, the true meaning of the film can’t be totally accepted by Chinese audiences.

The movie The legend of 1900, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, tells a story of an abandoned baby who is taken care by one of the crews in the ship, Virginia. The crew discovers the baby in 1900, so the boy is named 1900. He has musical talent and he learns how to play the piano without being taught. He wins the applause of passengers through his own efforts. However, he isn’t happy at all. What he is searching for is love and care. He cannot face the infinite city life we are living everyday although he got the chance to leave the ship. Finally, 1900 chose to die with the ship in the explosion. He would rather die on the ship than lose his soul like people in the outside world.

This thesis is an attempt to combine the film subtitle translation and interpretive theory together. It will be very conducive to the development of film subtitle translation in our country.

Through this theory, translator will choose appropriate way to translate so as to improve their translations and satisfy the audience’s needs of foreign films.

2. Literature Review

2.1 An overview on interpretive theory

The interpretive theory was born in France in the 1960s of the twentieth century and it had laid great impact to interpretation study and teaching field. From the early 1970s to the late 1980s,the interpretive theory occupied a leading position in the field of interpretation study(Gong 65-73). Danica Seleskovitch and M. Lederer are the main proponents and advocates for this theory. According to the interpretive theory, “The object of translation should be the content of the information and the meaning of the information, not the language.”(Seleskovitch and Lederer 196). The core ideas of the interpretive theory advocates three stages：understand the original text, get divorced from external shell of the source language, use another language to express the understanding original content and deep meaning(Liu 20-26). Scholars of the interpretive theory think that translators can convey our ideas or feelings on understanding, and they particularly attaches importance to the translation of the discourse level, they think “the interpretive translation is the only way to achieve the true purpose of the translation, and it can establish the equivalent of communicative meanings ”.

After decades of development, and it is currently expanding its research very fast. The importance of the research is also increasingly recognized by people. In view of many similarities between the film subtitle translation and interpreting, some scholars of the interpretive theory have applied it to the film subtitle translation. For example, film subtitle translation and interpreting have something similar in communication of nature. Communication between the characters in the film, in addition to the eye contact, gestures and other means, the lines are essential, so the majority of the film subtitles are in the form of dialogue. There is no doubt about its nature of the communication. On the surface, interpreting is a process of transforming the source language into the target language. But we can know from the theory and practice of interpreting that interpreting is not simply finding the equivalents between two languages, but through the language to understand the meaning of the speaker and then express the meaning of the source language in the target language, so that the speaker and listener can communicate with each other smoothly. This paper aims to take the film The legend of 1900 for example for further discussing the feasibility and value on the influence of interpretive theory upon film subtitle translation.

2.2 A brief review on subtitle translation

Western scholars started to study the film subtitle translation from the perspective of translation in the late 1950s. The article Traduction et Cinéma published in the journal Le linguiste/De taalkundige in 1956 and the special version of Cinéma et traduction published in the magazine Babel in 1960 can be considered as the earliest European research of the film translation theory. In 1974, the article On Subtitles in Television Programmes delivered by Dollerup in Babel was a first solo study on the subtitle translation(Dollerup 27). The article analyzed the different kinds of errors when English was translated into Danish in English TV programs. In the 1990s, the study on the film and television translation in the west entered the golden age and the theory of the film translation had breakthrough of development. After 1995, the studies of western film and television translations entered a new era of rapid development, the relevant theoretical research increased significantly and the European scholars" research results were remarkable. Compared with foreign countries, our country’s research of film and television translation started late. Since the 1980s, Nida"s translation theory was introduced into China and the theory became the guiding theory of translation gradually. Translating consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message，firstly in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style(Nida 142)．However, some translation theorists in China started to criticize Nida"s translation theory in the 1990s, they thought the equivalence of Nida’s theory cannot apply to translation studies. At the beginning of 2001, Chinese scholars entered into a stage of rethinking of the Nida"s translation theory. Generally, research both in practice and theory of film and television translation in our country lags behind some western countries. Our country needs to form our own theoretical system of the film and television translation and makes the research of film translation become a new hot spot in the field of translation studies.

The large-scale screen translation appeared after reformation and opening(Qian 61-65). With increasing globalization, China has closer links with the rest of the world. In cultural exchanges, more and more excellent foreign film and television works flooded into Chinese market. In order to make most people appreciate the foreign film and television works, dubbing and subtitling emerged at the right time. But as a new field of translation, its guiding theory was not so mature, so the qualities of the translated subtitles of foreign audiovisual products in the market were at different levels(Liu 103-107). Especially in China, the development of subtitle translation lagged behind the international market severely. With the improvement in film and television techniques and the increasing spiritual and cultural needs of people , China’s subtitling has just grown rapidly.

In today’s film, screen translation falls into two kinds, dubbing and subtitle translation. Dubbing means replacing the original speech in a film with words in another language, and subtitle translation means supplementing the original voice soundtrack by adding written text on screen. An online poll shows that more than 85 percent of people love to watch subtitled films, only 15 percent of people love dubbed films. Subtitled films have being more and more important in our country. There are some reasons that may explain this phenomenon. Firstly, film subtitle translation is comparatively cost-efficient. Film subtitle translation is much cheaper than dubbing and film subtitle translation saves time when we make the film. Fact shows if a same one-hour film is translated into different kinds of languages, the production time for subtitles film lasts for only three working days; however, if we dubbed the film, we need couple of weeks at least. As a consequence, film subtitle translation is preferable. Secondly, film subtitle translation can keep the original flavor of films in the fullest extent. Film subtitle translation does not change any soundtrack, scene, or dialogues in film, so the audience can feel the emotions of characters in the film more intuitively. Thirdly, watching English films becomes more and more popular, especially among some people who have to study English. A large number of people think that watching original films with film subtitle is a good way to avoid boredom when we study English. In this way, we can practice our listening and pronunciation, and we can learn some useful things from it, such as, manner of pronouncing words, the tone of their speaking, and the slang they used. All of those can be gained from the original films, and they must be helpful for our English.

3. The Application of the Interpretive Theory in Subtitle Translation of the Film The Legend of 1900

As we all know, subtitle translation is both a product of business and art(Munday 178). After subtitling, a foreign film was turned into an accepted one for Chinese audience to understand, this is not a small change. It has changed the film’s nature and changed a complete foreign product into the Chinese form. What we must do at present would be no other than exploring a way to guide the Chinese audience understanding the outside world with his native language. Therefore we are in urgent need of a new translation theory which can direct, program and improve subtitling, so as to speed up information gathering.

Applying the interpretive theory to subtitle translation, it is concluded that, the translator needs to stay cautious enough and utilize effective translation strategies comprehensively so that the target language audience can have access to new elements of foreign culture with no time constraint when they watch movies. Specific to the film called The Legend of 1900, featuring the story of a music wizard on a luxury cruise ship. In the film, it has different character dialogues and heroes’ amazing dialogues. In order to achieve the expectations of the audience, translators have to think it over and grasp accurately.

3.1 Possibility of application of the interpretive theory in subtitle translation

3.1.1 Characteristics of subtitle translation

The subtitle translation contains a lot of characteristics(Chen 123-124). The popularity of subtitle translation is one of the most important features of subtitle translation. Art comes from life, so Chinese film and television drama pursues not only beauty of art, but also the authenticity. As one of the closest forms of art to our daily life, the dialogues in the play basically come from life, and it is for the general audience to enjoy, so the language of film and television drama must be in line with the educational level of the masses. At the same time, it also request that the subtitle translation is easy to understand.

The second characteristic is the instantaneity of subtitle translation. The significant difference between film and television works and text reading is that the film and television works are to express the feelings of the characters through the voice and it’s transient, while text reading is a kind of activity that expresses the characters inner emotions and readers can read it over and over again. So the film and television subtitles are fleeting. It can not be read repeatedly like a book and can not have too many annotations to explain. Instantaneity has brought difficulty to film and television subtitle translation. Subtitle translation must be clear and concise so that the audience can fully understand the feelings of the characters.

Another characteristic is time and space limit. Since the subtitles can not exist apart from picture and sound, it determines the feature that subtitles will be limited in time and space. On the one hand, in time, because the appearance and disappearance of subtitles must be consistent with the beginning and the ending of the characters’ speech, it can’t stay in the same place as long as the text in the book. Each line of subtitle must pause the time on the screen which spectators take a fast look around. On the other hand, in space, subtitles refer to the translation or note of a foreign language below on the screen. As the silver screen has a limit to its size, there would be a space limit to the subtitle translation. The greatest attraction of the film and television drama lies in its perfect combination of image and sound. As a kind of exotic supplement, prerequisite for the existence of subtitles is that overall visual effect of the picture can’t be destroyed largely. Therefore, subtitle typesetting must also meet the aesthetic standards. In the long-term subtitling production, people gradually have a more unified evaluation criteria for the appearance of subtitles. Making text too big or too small makes it hard to read and annoying for many spectators. Because the film and television picture has a certain size, the length of each subtitle is also limited accordingly. The space limit decides the number of the subtitle’s words and lines. These limitations require translators to express the characters’ conscious thoughts and feelings vividly in limited time and space, so the translation shall be clear and completely reflect the contents of the source language. Otherwise it would disperse the audience’s attention easily, thus affecting the plot understanding of the audience.

3.1.2 Interpretive theory in the subtitle translation

Interpretive theory emerges in the late 1960s in France and originates from the practice of interpreting directly. Many scholars hold the idea that interpretive theory is not a universally applicable translation theory. It can not only be used to guide the practice of non-literary text translation, but also be applied to literary text translation. It is concerned with the identification of the mainstream of governing interpretation principles and written translation of literary or non-literary texts as well as translator training. According to the practice of interpretation, scholars of this school insist that translation is not a unidirectional decoding operation from the source language to the target language, but a dynamic process of expressing thoughts and ideas. Subtitle translation is a kind of means for expression of thoughts and feelings, and film and television works express emotions more obviously and intensely. In view of types, film and television works can be classified as the feature films, romance movies, documentaries, historical films, musicals, action movies, disaster films, science fiction, thriller, horror films and so on. Each type is different in language, plot and emotional expression. Furthermore, from the properties, film and television works can be divided into art films, commercial films, entertainment films, main-melody movies, teaching films, etc. These films have different types and different contents, the expression of their ideas and emotions is also different completely. This provides possibility for the application of interpretive theory in the subtitle translation.

Interpreting itself is a kind of communicative activities, and culture is an inevitable part of the communicative activities. In cross-culture communication, the most difficult problem is not the language itself, but the culture intension transferred by the language. By contrasting two languages in cultures, the interpreters seek to build bridges of communication between the two cultures and try their best to reduce errors in translation. All the procedures of the interpretive theory reflect the importance of cultural communication. According to this theory, translation is a kind of communicative act with the aim to convey communicative messages.“The main purpose of translation is to translate meaning rather than the external shell of the source language. And the object of translation is the content of the message, not the language. Translation is considered not only an exchange between two languages, but also a kind of cultural transfer in translation.” Owing to cultural differences and complexity of context, it is difficult to achieve accommodation in cross-cultural communication. But in order to grasp the translation criteria, the translators must have the consciousness of cross-cultural communication. If the translators are unaffected by the negative influence of the cultural differences, they can master the interpretive theory better and make the language appropriate and accurate.

Subtitle translation of film and television works is a translation model that converts integrative discourse of audiovisual unity to textual discourse. Although film and television drama subtitles are text translations, these translations pass on the information about the work to the audience by subtitles on the screen. This is very similar to the form that the interpreter translates the source language into the target language for the audience. Therefore, in my opinion, the film and television drama translation is characterized by features of both interpretation and translation. According to the above-mentioned definition and characteristics of subtitle translation, it is not difficult to find that the application of interpretive theory in the subtitle translation is very possible.

3.2 Subtitle translation in the film The Legend of 1900 from the perspective of the interpretive theory

3.2.1 Representation of character mood

Before the translator translates film and television works, it is often necessary to have a general understanding of the people’s background and character in the film, so as to better express the language style of each role in the play and make target audience feel same distinctive personality and linguistic features of the characters as the original language audience.

Ex.1 Fucking rich一ass bastards cannot lose nothing.

该死的有钱人什么都没留下

Ex.2 Cannot lose no watch.

就不能丢块表

After lunch, the black crew Danny sneaked up first class, laying on the ground to find the valuables guests may lose. But he got nothing. “该死的”, “就” in the translation vividly show Danny have a bright personality and we can obviously feel his hostility to the rich.

Ex.3 It wasn’t what I saw that stopped me，Max. It was what I didn’t see.

并非是我眼见的让我停住了脚步，而是我所看不见的。你能明白吗?

This sentence was what 1900 said to Max. When Max knew that Virginia was going to be destroyed, he decided to try to go aboard to find 1900 and advise him to leave the ship. 1900 felt very grateful to see this old friend. For many years, no one would remember that there was still a man in the abandoned ship, except for Max. “你能明白吗?” This sentence can make audience feel that it was a pretty emotional moment for 1900.

3.2 .2 Conversion of concreteness and abstraction

There is a tendency to use nouns and prepositions in the English language. Nominalization often results in abstract expression. There are a great number of abstract nouns and many meaning-weakening devices in English. While in the Chinese language there is tendency to use very specific or familiar objects to express abstract ideas. In the process of subtitle translation, we should pay attention to the difference, and try to translate the abstract expression in English into the concrete object in Chinese. Only in this way, we can ensure that the target audience can understand the story of and grasp the development of the story.

Ex.4 But the ocean would never tell me a thing.

但是大海不会给我任何启示的

If the translator translates the words “a thing” into “一个事物” directly, Chinese audience must be confused. According to the plots, the translator chooses to translate the word as “启示” to make abstract expression concrete. The author believes that it is desirable, not only to better convey the charm of the original language, but also to be propitious to let Chinese audience understand the story.

Ex.5 How many people I have seen saying goodbye on the docks without giving a damn.

我见过无数人在码头上互相道别之后却立即转身离去神色漠然

The part of speech of “damn” is complex, which means “一点点” . “Without giving a damn” is directly translated as “没给一丁点”, the setting may not conform to the logic language in Chinese. The translator considers the background of this sentence is what Max said when he watched 1900 leave Virginia. Separation is the saddest thing, “神色漠然” is enough to make the target language audience be deeply affected by the film.

Ex.6 If you just want to feel something more solid beneath your feet.

如果你只想站在陆地上

The translator translates the words “something more solid beneath your feet” into “陆地”. It breaks away from the form of source language on the basis of understanding the source language. The translator conveys the connotation of this sentence effectively by translating abstract word “something” into concrete word “陆地”. Due to the indirectness of language, an utterance’s literal meaning is not always consistent with the pragmatic sense it wants to convey. If this sentence is translated as “如果你只想脚下的东西更坚实”, it is literal meaning of the original indeed, but it isn’t the true meaning of the original in film and it may mislead the audience

3.2.3 Treatment of cultural image

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