A Study Of Film Subtitle Translation From The Perspective Of Domestication And Foreignization

China has a long translation history and has formed its own system of translationtheories. However, film translation is a brand new area of translation. With the continuousdevelopment of film industry, films have played an important role in enriching people’scultural life. Moreover, they not only entertain the general public but undertake asignificant mission to promote cultural communication and exchange between differentcultures as well.Subtitle translation has a close connection to cross-cultural studies. As is known to all,language and culture closely related to each other. Language is the carrier of culture andculture is the soil of language. Therefore, a good translation not only involves language butalso considers the cultural elements. Since film is regarded as a form of cultural exchange,its subtitle translation needs to cover both the cultural level and the linguistic level. Filmsubtitle translation does not just refer to the language transfer and to a great extent, it isconstrained by the requirements of target culture. In addition, compared with other formsof translation, film subtitle translation has to be limited to time and space. For the sourcelanguage, many words, expressions and some particular linguistic forms with strongcultural color can not find a complete equivalence in the target language. All the factorsabove result in the difficulty of film subtitle translation.Thus, an important question of film subtitle translation is how to deal with therelationship between source language culture and target language culture. To mention thecultural translation, two basic cultural translation strategies can never be ignored, that is,domestication and foreignization. The former is target language culture-oriented and thelatter is source language culture-oriented. The accurate choice of these two strategies hasalways been a focus of debates in translation filed. This thesis will analyze and study filmsubtitle translation in perspective of domestication and foreignization and try to explorehow to better combine domestication and foreignization in film subtitle translation, whichwill help to deal with the relation between the source culture and the target culture, reducethe cultural differences and promote the communication and exchange between differentcultures.This thesis consists of an introduction, the main body and a conclusion. Its maincontent is as follows: The first part is an introduction which overviews and summarizes the film translationand its two types: dubbing and subtitles translation. Moreover, this part also introduces thehistory and current situation of film translation home and abroad, and then advances theimportance of film subtitle translation.The second part is the main body, which is composed of four chapters.Chapter Ⅰ first sets forth the definitions of film subtitle translation proposed by somescholars. Then it classifies the film subtitle translation from the linguistics, techniques,content of subtitles and other aspects and presents two technical properties of subtitling:spatial layout and temporal duration. The last part of this chapter analyzes and states thetechnical constraints and non-technical constraints affecting film subtitle translation.Chapter Ⅱ focuses on the two cultural translation strategies, domestication andforeignization. First of all, the definitions of domestication and foreignization as well as itsrelevant details are introduced. Then, the debates between them in the west and China arestated. The following part puts forward three main factors influencing the choices of thesetwo strategies, which are text type, translation purpose and target reader. Finally, itanalyzes domestication and foreignization in film subtitle translation.Chapter Ⅲ analyzes the application of domestication and foreignization inEnglish-Chinese film subtitle translation and also respectively provides the methods ofchoice with regards to the translations of language forms, religious expressions, proverbs,fixed expressions and so on. According to the detailed analysis, domestication strategyshould be adopted for the translation of language forms, ways of expressions as well asexpressions with regional features in order to help Chinese audiences to understand andappreciate accurately foreign films, while foreignization for the translation of religiousexpressions to make Chinese audience learn more foreign religious cultures and the choiceof domestication and foreignization for proverbs and fixed expressions depends onwhether these English expressions have the equivalent ones in Chinese to reach thepurpose of effective communication.Chapter Ⅳ analyzes the application of domestication and foreignization inChinese-English film subtitle translation and discusses how to choose the two culturaltranslation strategies to deal with idioms, fixed expressions, Chinese-specific phrases andhumorous elements in Chinese films. Based on the discussion, the film subtitle translators should adopt domestication strategy to handle the translation of idioms and fixedexpressions in order to make the foreign audience easily understand and appreciateChinese films while adopt foreignization strategy to handle the translation of Chinesespecific phrases and humorous elements with aim to spread the Chinese specific cultures toforeigners.The last part is the conclusion, which summaries the preceding analysis, and pointsout the main purpose of this thesis. A good film translation work should enable the targetlanguage audience to acquire the same enjoyment with source language audience andunderstand more source language culture, which requires that the translator co-usedomestication and foreignization and make them co-exist and complementary.