论文总字数：31370字

摘 要

随着中国综合国力的提高，华语电影开始进入西方人视野。华语电影走出国门势必涉及电影字幕的翻译。

夏廷德提出: 由于源语与目的语之间存在语言、文化和思维方式的差异，翻译损失不可避免。本文以翻译补偿法为基础, 以李安的“家庭三部曲”为例，论述了电影字幕翻译中翻译补偿的必要性，并从词汇和文化层面介绍了柯平的补偿法策略，包括增益、具体化、概略化、释义和归化。

关键词：电影字幕翻译；翻译损失；翻译补偿法；

Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Background of the study 1

1.2 Significance of the study 1

2. Literature Review 2

2.1 An overview of translation compensation 2

2.2 Previous studies on compensation in translation studies 4

2.3 Previous studies on translation of movie subtitle 5

3. Subtitle Translation of Ang Lee’s films from the Perspective of Compensation 5

3.1 Compensation at lexical level 6

3.2 Compensation at cultural level 9

4. Conclusion 11

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

In translation studies, translators often come across some problems that they cannot find any equivalent words and have difficulty in understanding the difference of culture and mode of thinking between source language and target language. Actually, it is because translators are not familiar with the relevant background of the source text and target text. Translation is not only a matter of language, but also is closely related to a nation’s unique culture and thinking patterns and so on. Therefore, compensation is necessary for film subtitle translation.

1.1 Background of the study

With the improvement of people’s living standards, films become more related to people’s lives and it is a good way to relax and recreate. Foreign films are popular with Chinese people. Meanwhile, with the improvement of China"s comprehensive national power, Chinese films gradually begin to step into the world. As a bridge of propagating Chinese culture, Chinese films can help foreign audiences understand the profound cultural deposit of China better. Subtitle translation is a new research field in contemporary translation circles and it plays an important role in intercultural communication. Subtitle translation is not only a conversion of different languages, but also a cultural transmission, reflecting differences of thinking mode, value system, religions. But the quality of subtitle translation cannot be ensured due to a lack of systematic theoretical guidance. Good subtitle translation can help target audiences understand the film better and deepen their understanding of the source language film. In turn, terrible subtitle translation will make audience feel so confused that they lose interest in the film. Gottli says that excellent subtitle translation cannot save a bad film, but bad subtitle translation could destroy a good film" (Gottli 164). However, the problem existed in translating subtitle of Chinese films has been the biggest obstacle to prevent Chinese films from entering into overseas market.

1.2 Significance of the study

In creation of films, Chinese writers tend to omit cultural background knowledge that is self-evident for source language audience while target audiences know nothing about it, so cultural default become an insurmountable cultural barriers to target audience. Film subtitle translation is of prime importance, and it can decide whether domestic film exported to other countries can win target audience"s love and popularity or not. However, translation is a special activity, which transcends language and society. So it is impossible for translators to make perfect subtitle translations owing to cultural difference. In addition, there is semantic loss and pragmatic loss between source language and target language. Barhudalove points out that, drawing on equivalence theory, the default of the equivalence will cause semantic loss. Chinese translation scholar Wang Enmian proposes that semantic loss is unavoidable because each language has its own unique semantic system. Sandor G. J Harvey mainly focuses on pragmatic loss. Moreover, different textual structure between source language and target language will cause pragmatics loss too. These translation losses will lead to subtitle translation incoherence, making target audience have difficulty in understanding cultural background knowledge transmitted in the original film. Subtitle translators feel that translation loss is the most difficult for them, and overcoming translation loss also becomes the key to gaining success of the subtitle translation. When translators deal with translation, semantic loss and pragmatics loss, various kinds of compensation strategies are imperative (Tu Guoyuan, 9). Therefore, subtitle translators have responsibility and necessity to take appropriate compensatory strategy to compensate for translation loss between source language and target language.

2. Literature Review

2.1 An overview of translation compensation

Eugene Nida (87, 33) points out from the perspective of universality of the sign that now that any two interlocutors don"t have same referential and associative meaning towards same phonology, lexical, grammar, and textual features, there will be some loss or distortion in linguistic communication. That is to say, to some extent, there are some losses of information, linguistic function, culture, and aesthetic factors of original text in translation. And this is inevitable. When run across some words and sentences which are difficult to be translated to target language, translator should use the expression of the target language to compensate for translation loss. This process is called translation compensation and in fact it is an adaptation strategy. In 1960s and 1970s, terms related to translation compensation appeared one after another, such as compensation, compensatory, compensate. At that time, the research in this area was not mature enough.

2.1.1 The definition of compensation

Several scholars have given the definition of translation compensation. The conception of “Translation Compensation” is firstly proposed by Wolfram Wilss in The Science of Translation: The Problems and The Methods. He suggests that compensation has been viewed as a linguistic means of dealing with structural differences between linguistic and nonlinguistic (Wolfram 82). Newmark makes a clearer definition for compensation in the process of translation, and the losses of a certain contents, voice effects, rhetoric methods about the original are unavoidable due to differences between source language and target language or different translation quality from different translators.

Drawing on the target language and language means, domestic scholar Xia Tingde defines compensation as a method compensating for the translation loss according to the type of translation text and translation purpose. Compensation is an indispensable means in translation. These strategies adopted in the process of translation aim to resolve loss of the target language can be considered as compensation strategies. In short, compensation is a technique that helps minimize the translation loss.

2.1.2 The principle and classification of compensation

There is no uniform standard for the principle of compensation, because translators study this complex activity from several different perspectives, such as language systems, communicative function, and aesthetic, they have different understandings of translation and translation principles. As an indispensable part of translation theory, translation compensation theory has something in common with other translation theories, but it also differs from other translation theories. In Xia Tingde’s book Research on Translation Compensation, he summers up six principles of translation compensation: the principle of demand, relevance principles, key principles, principle of minimum distance, functional principles and consistency principle. These six principles are drawing on source language and target language. They are very important for ensuring reasonableness and similarity of compensation. They are not only related to each other, but also have their own characteristics. Adhering to these principles can make contributions to translation. It can also greatly reduce the negative impact of compensation and avoid blindness and disorder of translation compensation. Translation compensation should proceed rationally, regularly, scientific, and healthily.

In terms of the classification of translation compensation, domestic scholar Ke Ping divided it into eight kinds: adding additional annotation, adaptation, generalization, specification, paraphrase, contextual amplification, shift of perspective, back-translation; This paper uses Ke Ping’s classification of compensation, combined with specific examples of Ang Lee’s “Family Trilogy” to explore specific role of translation compensation in the practice of translating subtitles at the lexical and cultural level.

2.2 Previous studies on compensation in translation studies

Between 1980 and 1900, only 23 research papers about compensation appeared in China, but most of which mainly focused on specific compensation methods and cultural default (Li and Jia 17-22). After 21st century, the research of compensation is increasing; the classification is more and more specific, which makes translators facing more new opportunities and challenges. These studies of Xia Tingde and Ma Hongjun have been widely recognized. Meanwhile, other scholars, such as Newmark（196）and Catford, ( 71 ) have made their own definitions on compensation. Catford is a famous British linguist and translation theorist. The translation theory work: A Linguistic written by him has a profound influence on Western linguistic and translation filed. Ma Hongjun absorbs foreign scholars’ research results about compensation. On this basis, he advances his own views about compensation according to the definition of compensation. He suggests that compensation can be divided into two types, that is, explicit compensation and implicit compensation. The former refers to the specific comments, which can reflect tendency to make translation dissimilation; the later means that translator can adjust original text to achieve the reader’s response equivalence by fully using the target language meanings, which reflects that translator have tendency to use domestication in translation. (Ma 10)

2.3 Previous study on translation of subtitle

After decades of development, subtitle translation research has made considerable progress in the West. Western scholars, especially European scholars are at the forefront of the field of subtitle translation research. In 1974, Cay Dollerup published an article “On subtitles in television program, which was the first to analyze subtitle translation separately. In 1990s, subtitle translation entered into Golden Age, and there were major breakthroughs in subtitle translation research. In 1992, drawing on professional knowledge of subtitle translation, Jan Ivarsson, a Swedish subtitle translator, published Subtitling for the media: A hand book. The book was a fairly comprehensive introduction to subtitle translation, becoming the first book to introduce subtitle translation in Western history. In 1998, with the help of Marry Carroll, Ivarsscm republished the book and named it subtitling. Ivarsson"s two books laid the foundation for studies of Western subtitle translation. Since 1995, western subtitle translation research has developed rapidly, and related academic fields have been fruitful. Among them, the most outstanding scholars included Basil Hatim and Ian Mason, Henrik Gottlieb. 

Compared with Western countries, Chinese film subtitle translation research started lately. Strictly speaking, domestic subtitle translation study began in 1990s. In recent years, Chinese translation scholars have begun to pay attention to the film subtitle translation research, including some outstanding characters, such as Ma Zhengqi, Zhang Chunbai, In the article "on the Basic principles of film and television translation" published by Ma Zhengqi, the paper points out that the basic principles must be grasped in film and television translation from five aspects. (84). On the whole, Chinese and Western scholars have studied the subtitle translation from many aspects, constructing the general frame of subtitle translation research, redefining subtitle translation in the multimedia context, solving many puzzles about subtitle translation, building a bridge between subtitle translation and traditional literary translation.

3. Subtitle Translation of Ang Lee’s “Family Trilogy” from the Perspective of Compensation

Ke Ping proposes that the means of translation compensation includes add additional annotation, shift of perspective, adaptation, paraphrase, generalization, contextual amplification, back-translation, specification. (109-110). Subtitle translation is a special kind of translation, which means that the method of adding additional annotation subtitle translation cannot be used in subtitle translation to compensate for translation loss. The most commonly used compensation strategies in subtitle translation are contextual amplification, adaptation, paraphrase generation, specification. (109-110)

In this paper, the reason why I choose the example of Ang Lee"s “Family Trilogy” to analyze subtitle translation from the perspective of compensation is that there are lots of cultural conflicts and cultural defaults in these films mentioned below, but the subtitle translation of Ang Lee’s films is translated successfully by using the method of translation compensation to compensate for cultural default between Chinese and Western culture, making it possible for foreigners to understand Chinese films without hindrance. 

3.1 Compensation at lexical level

From Wikipedia, lexicon refers to something concerning the words or lexicon of a language. Linguistics often uses lexical concepts to study language and translation. Meanwhile, lexicon also refers to changes of the composition, classification and the morphological words in a sentence. Compensation treats lexical as a unit, and emphasizes the accuracy of words translation. Translation compensation at lexical level includes amplification, omission, nouns converted to verbs and so on. Here we just take a few examples to give a brief introduction. In a word, as the smallest unit of a sentence, translation of words is essential, because a small mistake may affect the meaning of whole sentence. If a word is the keyword of the whole article, the mistake may lead to the misunderstanding of the meaning of the whole article. So we must be careful and meticulous at the lexical level of translation compensation. When there is difference between two kinds of languages, we should choose appropriate compensation in translation, and try to show t full information of the original to readers. Next, we will take some concrete examples of subtitle translation in Ang Lee’s “Family Trilogy” to further understand the application of the compensation at lexical level.

3.1.1 Contextual amplification

Contextual amplification is adding words appropriately to reproduce information that the reader of the target language does not understand while reader of the source language have a good knowledge of original text. In general, it is the most suitable to use context amplification when original words contain the knowledge of background that source language readers are very familiar with , but the target reader does not necessarily understand. As a basic method of lexical compensation, contextual amplification can directly explain the implied information in the source language. Here are two examples to illustrate the use of contextual amplification.SL:朱家倩：我得回家吃星期天晚餐，不去不行。《推手》

TL: I have to get home for the Sunday dinner torture ritual. Pushing Hand

Zhu Jiaqian"s boyfriend invited her to visit the Art Gallery, but she refused. Because that day was Sunday, Zhu Jiaqian had to go home to attend her Sunday family dinner. Family dinner often means that family members get together happily to share delicious food in western, so western audiences had difficulty in understanding that Zhu Jiaqian hated the Sunday family dinner so deeply that she was unwilling to go home. In the process of translation, translator cleverly added the phrases "Torture ritual"，which implied that her home was like a cage to her, and Sunday dinner means a kind of suffering and anguish to her . Adding this phrase can help target audience understand the cultural conflict of the film, which is a good method of translation compensation for the cultural default of target language.

SL: 朱老：天师曰：补肾之方：人参二两，肉桂二两，海参八两。《饮食男女》

TL: The best way to increase sexual prowess is to mix 3 ounces of ginseng, 3 ounces of aloe vera, and 8 ounces of dried sea cucumber. Joyful Reunion

Old Zhu is studying the prescription of tonifying kidney. Tonifying Kidney is a Chinese medicine noun, referring to changing the state of kidney deficiency through the diet. When it comes to tonifying kidney," Chinese people often associate it with impotence. Impotence refers to regulating body, improving function of kidney and strengthening sexual ability. In the film, old Zhu has actually been dating with Jin Rong secretly. Therefore, he studies the prescription of tonifying kidney in order to recuperate good body. At the end of the film, Jin Rong"s pregnancy seems to be echoed by this scene. But in Western countries, there is no connection between tonifying kidney and impotence". If translator translate "Bushen" to tonifying kidney with literal translation, Western audience just can understand its surface meaning, and cannot understand what old Zhu does is actually for curing impotence. In the process of translation, the translator adopts the contextual amplification compensation method, and directly translates “Bushen into "increase sexual prowess". Such translation not only can make target audience realize the true meaning of the original text, compensating for the traditional Chinese medicine culture connotation in the original text, but also make them successfully realize echoes in the original text. 

3.1.2 Specification

Specification (Xia Tingde: 281,205) means translating the upper coordinate words in the original context into hyponym in the target language according to its actual reference, or translating the general concepts into concrete concepts. In western countries, people tend to not use the same word, but use synonyms to express the same concept. However, there are always phenomena of reusing the same word, which can easily make target audience feel confused about the concept in the process of translation. At this point, the method of specification compensation is one of the best solutions to solve cultural default.

SL:餐馆老板：几十年来，就养出了你们这批懒鬼。《推手》

TL: Four decades of such thinking has produced all you lazy bums. Pushing Hands

What the restaurant owner says implies that he looks down upon mainlanders, thinking that four decades of people"s commune period has created lazy personality of the mainlander. Because of a lack of knowledge of this history, Western audiences have no awareness of the starting and ending time of the people"s Commune movement.

The translator uses the method of specification, translating the "decades" into "forty years" in order to make western audience realize the long span of time, emphasizing that the boss does not have a good knowledge of the situation of mainland that people"s commune system has been over for a long time, but he is always taking on superior snobbish attitude towards Chinese people.

Specification of translation compensation is well combined with the original text, which greatly reduces the target audience"s difficulty in understanding the film information of source language.

3.1.3 Generalization

Generalization refers to the compensatory strategy that conveys the meaning of the original text in an omitted and generalized manner (Ke Ping, 26). Generalization is generalizing redundant information in the original text or that is self-evident to the target audience. Translation information is clearer and the structure is more refined through the generalization.

SL: 高妈妈：这是爸跟妈给儿媳妇的见面礼。《喜宴》

TL: A gift to our future daughter-in-law. The Wedding Banquet

Gao Weitong"s mother asks Gu Weiwei to go to her room to give her a meet gift. In China, "meet gift" refers to some gifts or coins that elders give to juniors when they first meet. This traditional Chinese custom has been followed so far, Chinese people can easily understand the profound meaning “meet gift", but Westerners have difficulty in understanding the special meaning of gift that his mother gives Gu Weiwei. In addition, this background is when Gao Weitong"s father and mother arrive in United States at first night, the gift is handed to Gu Weiwei. Here the gift (a gift presented to sb. at the first meeting) is just a gift, but it is on the first day of their arrival that Gu Weiwei gains it from Gao Weitong’s mother due to her identity as their future daughter-in-law, so it is unnecessary to rigidly adhere to the original text to emphasize the meaning of the word "meet". Otherwise, if the short original text is converted into a long translation, it will reduce the audience"s speed of understanding the film, making the audience waste too much unnecessary time and energy to watch this sentence. Therefore, here the translator generalizes the "meet gift" of Chinese culture directly to gift of western culture to compensate for cultural default in the target language, which is loyal to the principle of improving the acceptability of the target audience.

3.2 Compensation at cultural level

In Western and Chinese culture, people will have different understanding of different words due to different history, culture, environment, polity and religion,. In many situations, we like using an image to convey something, for example, the fallen leaves means sorrow, the rising sun means hope, but Westerners cannot understand such connotations. What’s more, they even misunderstand them.

The type of cultural translation loss mainly refers to the non-equivalence between cultural default and culture. There are many compensation methods such as paraphrasing, transliteration, adaptation, alienation and additional annotation. Due to the existing linguistic and cultural differences between Chinese and Western , compensation is always necessary in the process of translation, so that the translation can convey the original information completely and fully to target audience. Due to the particularity of film subtitle, we just introduce paraphrase、adaptation at lexical level.

3.2.1 Paraphrase

Paraphrase is not translating source text word by word and sentence by sentence, but is a means of interpreting the sense of the source word and phrase in the context directly to the target audience. Paraphrase is widely used in subtitle translation. Because it can not only retain the information of the source text, to a greater extent, but also let the translator express their ideas freely. (Ke Ping: 123) Appropriate use of paraphrase in the subtitle translation can make the cultural default in the target language compensated.

SL：朱老：来，杰米，吃块肉，吃肉长肉。《推手》

TL: Here, put some meat on your bones. Pushing Hands

Old Zhu see that his grandchild is as thin as his daughter-in-law Martha, and he even doesn"t eat any meat, so he takes a large chunk of meat to Jamie, want him to eat more meat to become stronger when his families are eating dinner. The traditional Chinese dietary therapy thinks that "eat what repair what". So Chinese people all know this saying and understand Old Zhu"s good intentions. But in Western countries, there is no such thing as “eat what repair what". If the translator translate " eat meat and gain weight" into "eat meat and grow meat" literally , which just convey the meaning of eating more meat to gain more weight, and loses the implied meaning of this sentence that "eat what repair what in the source language , not showing old Zhu"s care and love to his grandchild too. Considering cultural differences and mode of thinking between China and Western countries, translator translates this sentence into "Put some meat on your bones", compensating for the component of the cultural default in the sentence and realizing functional equivalence between original text and translation.

3.2.2 Adaptation

Adaptation refers to using some phrases with the color of target language that are used as frequently as in the source language to translate source language. The advantage is that it can make the translation conforms to the expression of target language, making the translation more authentic (Ke Ping 23). By using adaptation to compensate for the content of cultural default in the target text, the functional equivalence between the translation and the original text can be realized very effectively.

SL：别看妈平常没精打采的，可是一进了百货公司，精力有如神助。《喜宴》

TL: When Ma enters a department store, she turns into Michael Jordan. The Weeding Banquet

Once Gao Weitong’s mother goes to the department store to go shopping, she will become energetic suddenly contrary to her usual mien. It seems that there is god helping his mother secretly when she is shopping. In order to make Western audience grasp the key meaning of this sentence in very short subtitle time, the method of adaptation compensation is used here. Although Westerners don’t know supernatural being of China, they are familiar with Michael Jordan" (Michael Jordan, American professional basketball player, known as the "flying Trapeze", known for his astonishing speed and enduring endurance). Translator uses the example of Michael Jordan to introduce the image of shopping superman of his mother to target audience, describing the energetic and vigorous image vividly when his mother is going shopping. Although there is a great discrepancy between Michael Jordan" and the original "Energy like God in the original text in imagery, the linguistic functions of the two phrases are almost the same, impressing on the target audience the image of shopping superman deeply.

4. Conclusion

In the process of translation, how to deal with cultural differences will directly influence target readers in reading translated text. Translation compensation is an indispensable part of the translation process. In this paper, we analyze mutual-related translation compensation strategies in English version of the subtitle translation of Ang Lee"s films. In translation, the translator can use any translation method flexibly, but the most basic is that translation should be faithful to the spirit of the original. Adaptation, specification and generalization are the most effective way to convey the most relevant information, so that the target audience can accurately grasp the film information of source language, and use the smaller efforts to achieve similar contextual effects, ultimately achieving the maximum value of film appreciation. Facing the opportunity and challenge of the globalization, what should Chinese films do? Ang Lee"s successful exploration of Chinese films has brought enlightenment to the cross-cultural communication of Chinese films. The successful subtitle translation of Ang Lee"s films is worthwhile to be learned for those directors who want to enter into overseas market.

Works Cited

Basil Hatim “Discourse and the Translator”. London: Longman Press, 1997

Peter Newmark. A Textbook of Translation. New York: Prentice Hall, 1988. Wolfram.

John Cunnison Catford. “A Linguistic Theory of Translation.” Beijing: Tourism Education Press, 1991.

柯平．1991．加注和増益——谈变通和补偿手段，中国翻译，(1)：23-26．

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