Analysis And Application Of The Quality Control System Of Film Subtitle Translation

As a modern form of art encompassing performing arts, visual arts and literary arts, the film has been an essential part in people’s entertainment life. The film industry in China has been developing at a tremendous speed, along with the booming economy in China. Since imported films, especially Hollywood films, have been highly competitive in the Chinese market, film translation has been an important sector which calls for high quality translation in both dubbed and subtitled versions. However, the quality of different versions of translated subtitles varies so much that a higher level of quality control system of subtitle translation is deemed necessary.In order to study the quality of subtitle translation, this research sets up a theoretical framework, the quality control system of subtitle translation, based on the concept of equivalence and J. C. Catford’s linguistic approach to translation studies. With studies on mainstream western translation theories, this research model is fulfilled with6levels:the semantic level, the grammatical level, the stylistic level, the functional level, the contextual level, and the cultural level.17maxims in six levels are adopted in the quality control system of subtitle translation, which achieves a practical quality control of subtitle translation in macro aspect through detailed test on each level of text in micro aspect.This system is put into application with a test of subtitle translation of the film Star Wars Episode3: Revenge of the Sith. Two versions of translated subtitles in Chinese are analyzed and put into comparative study on six levels, in order to figure out which one has achieved better equivalence. Therefore, the author attempts to tell the quality of subtitle translation through analysis and discussion, in order to test the practicality and feasibility of the system, and also the limitations.