Functionalist Approach And Subtitle Translation

Cultural communication between China and other nations has increasing greatly since reform and opening up to the outside world, especially audiovisual products communication as a big proportion. Recently translation researchers and translators have also started to focus on the subtitle translation. They explore the specific features and strategies of this translation type. However, according to our current situation in subtitle translation, we need further research. Although we have plenty of books about translation theory, subtitle translation was involved in only very few chapters. Therefore, subtitle translation is still at a preliminary stage. This paper intends to make a study in translation strategies of subtitling in the sitcom Friends from the perspective of the functionalist theories of translation. It is expected to propose a feasible translation strategy for this text by the application of this theory. Skopostheory is the most important in functionalist translation theories. It prefers the skopos rule as the top-ranking one. It suggests that the translation strategy is decided by the purpose of the target text which is mainly fulfilled by the intended target audience's demand with their cultural-specific knowledge and their expectations. The investigation from an official website shows that the Chinese audience are mostly college students and clerk officers who possess good command of English and Western culture. They claim that they expect to recognize the urban culture and life reflected by the sitcom Friends. Therefore, the translator is expected to try to keep the linguistic features and styles and reproduce the cultural identity of the source text even if the translation is unnatural. In this sense, the translator should adopt foreignization to meet the Chinese audience'expectations and the purpose of the target text. Furthermore, in this sitcom the dialogue is plain and simple which facilitates the understanding on the part of Chinese audience. Also the subtitles appear with the pictures and sounds of the source text, and this can help the target audience understand the unnatural or incomprehensible dialogues. So these factors make foreignization more preferable.