An Analysis Of Subtitle English Translation Of Zhang Yimou's Films From The Functionalist Perspective

Nowadays, film has become an indispensible part of people's daily life. Film is effective for culture exchanges and communication. As a result, subtitle translation has developed rapidly and people begin to pay more and more attention to film subtitle translation. And the demand for film subtitle translation is growing every year. Compared with Europe, China develops quite slowly in subtitling practice, subtitling study and subtitling standards. This thesis attempts to use functionalist theory to discuss subtitle English translation.According to the dominant communicative function, Reiss categorizes text types as informative text, expressive text and operative text. The main purpose of informative text is to deliver what is going on in the real world to the receiver. The expressive text focuses on the aesthetic aspect. The operative text is designed to induce the receivers to respond in a particular way. (Nord,2001:42)Besides, Reiss also establishes the audio-visual text. We can draw from Reiss's text typology theory that the subtitle can be viewed as a complex with informative text, appellative text and audio-visual text. The translator should apply different translation strategies according to different texts.According to skopostheorie, subtitling is an activity with a certain purpose. It aims to deliver as much relevant information as possible of the director's intention within the temporal and spacial limitations. According to the theory of translation action, subtitling is an interpersonal interaction. The director's intention plays an essential role in the process of subtitle translating and determines what strategies should be applied in translating a certain film.This thesis attempts to study the English translation of the subtitles of Zhang Yimou's films Hero and House of Flying Daggers by applying the functionalist theory. This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One gives a brief introduction of the research background, aims and the thesis structure. Chapter T wo is an overview of film subtitle including the definitions and features of film subtitle. The author discusses the constraints, requirements and strategies of film subtitle translation. The domestic and foreign studies on film subtitle translation have been mentioned as well. As far as constraints are concerned, there are two main constraints in subtitle translation, which are constraints of space and time. Based on the constraint of space, the subtitle should not take too much space of the screen. There are at most two lines of English subtitle and no more than 35 words in each line. As for Chinese subtitle, there is only one line on the screen and no more than 18 words in it. Constraint of time means the subtitle should not be allowed to remain in the screen for too long. The subtitle should be presented in the screen after the dialogue and disappear in two seconds after the dialogue finishes. Besides, the subtitle translator should also take the ability of audience's understanding and reading speed into account. Generally speaking, the audience can read three words every second. Therefore the translator must make sure the audience can read the subtitle within a certain time. Those are the factors a subtitle translator should pay attention to in the process of translation. As for the studies on subtitle translation, the author lists some prominent scholars and their contributions in this field. And the author points out the development of this field is healthy and the future is promising but there is still some challenges waiting ahead. In this chapter, the author also mentions reduction strategy of film subtitle translation and categorizes it into three types:condensation, selective abridging and omission. However, in practice, they are often used together in subtitle translation. But the subtitle translator should also be aware that reduction doesn't mean he or she can delete or condense whatever he or she wants. The subtitle translator should apply reduction strategies according to specific texts. Chapter Three is an overview of functionalist translation theories and the translation strategy of reduction. Skopostheorie is essencial to the functionalist approach. According to skopostheorie, subtitle translation is an activity with a certain purpose within the constraints. The translator should define the skopos before translation. The translator aims to deliver as much relevant information as possible which carrying the director's intention to the target audience with certain cultural background within constraints of time and space. Besides, according to translation action theory, subtitle translation is an interpersonal interaction during which many participants are involved. Participants are initiator, translator, commissioner, source-text producer, target-text receiver and target-text user. The director acts as commissioner and his intention plays a key role in determining the strategies of subtitle translation. According to Reiss's text typology, subtitle translation is a text-processing action. The translator should analyze the source text and compare the source text with the target text to achieve the skopos. Text types are categorized into three types, which are informative text, expressive text and operative text according to the communicative function. But Newmark suggests "few texts are purely expressive, informative or vocative:most include all three functions, with an emphasis on one of the three." (qtd. in Jia Wenbo,2004:57) Chapter Four applies functionalist translation theory to the movie subtitle translation of Hero and House of Flying Daggers. The last chapter makes a conclusion of the whole thesis and puts forward limitations and suggestions in the film subtitling translation field.