A Stylistic Study Of Deceptive Equivalence In Subtitling Translation

The present thesis is basically a descriptive and analytical research for subtitling translationbased on the theory of deceptive equivalence. The corpus of subtitles in this thesis is adoptedfrom the subtitles of an American sitcom The Big Bang Theory played on Sohu, with a few ofanother subtitles from websites. This thesis aims to discuss the emerging translationform—fansubbing—through case analysis and to find the deceptive equivalences and to explorethe justifiability and problems of some peculiar cases of its translation.Subtitling refers to the written dialogues of films or videos that usually appeared at thebottom of the screen. Generally, it is divided into intralingual translation and interlingualtranslation. However, the subtitling translation mentioned in this article specially indicatesinterlingual translation, that is, the written translation of a dialogue in a foreign language.Subtitling translation is a form of audiovisual translation. Whether in the market, or in research,subtitling translation in China is just newly emerging. In the past, people who wanted to enjoyaudiovisual programs only had two options: watching TV or going to the cinema; within thelimited resources only a small fraction are the imported programs. However, these programs aremostly dubbing translation while the subtitling is merely play a supporting role. In recent years,the popularity of network communication lead to a rapid growth for the Chinese and foreign filmexchange, which has become an important way of cross-cultural communication. The role playedby the subtitling translation is particularly notable, as majority of foreign video circulating on thenetwork are presented in the form of subtitling translation. The translation is mostly done byamateur translators—fansubbers—who have also formed a kind of dedicated internetorganizations, known as the fansub group. Under the circumstance of the prosperity offansubbing, more and more researchers began to turn their attention to film translation andsubtitling. However, compared with the Western study, domestic study in this field areinsufficient, and need to get more attention.Stylistics is the study of styles of language, which focus on the language form’s influence tothe thematic meaning and aesthetic value of the text. There is a statement in stylistics that inaddition to the function of expressing contents, language also has an aesthetic value on its form,which called stylistic value. Therefore, the change of language form will cause the variation ordeviation from the original stylistic value. The stylist pointed out that both of the content andform should be retained in the process of translation. The deceptive equivalence is a concept ofstylistics, refers to the deviation of stylistic value. This thesis is aimed at exploring thecreativeness in translation; take the stylistic value as a space for translator to play their subjective initiative. Whereas, the deceptive equivalence, to some extent, is a reflection of the translator’sdeliberate innovation, rather than unintentional errors.This thesis focuses on the exploration of subtitling, especially the particularity offansubbing. A detailed analysis has carried out on the characteristics and constraints of subtitlingtranslation. A general introduction have been given to the network fansubbing and fansub groups,which includes the presentation of its translation process, an explanation of its popularization,and an analytical statements of its language features, existing problems. The last part of thethesis is a case analysis for the unique linguistic expressions appeared in fansubbing translation.After a specific analysis of the actual case with the deceptive equivalence theory, we can see thatnot all the unfaithful translations are unreliable and unacceptable, as some of them are brilliantwith innovation. The rationality of the deceptive equivalence thus is confirmed.In conclusion, there is a summary for the entire thesis, and a prospect of the further study offansubbing translation, which may bring a great revolution for translation research field.