A Study On English-Chinese Subtitle Translation Methods From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

Since China has pursued the policies of reform and opening up and joined the worldtrade organization, its economy and culture become more prosperous. At the same time,there goes frequent exchanges and communication with other countries. This trans-regional and cross-cultural development will inevitably lead to new cultural fusion,which brings out the birth and growth of audiovisual industry. In1980s, dubbing becamethe main form to understand the foreign films, which were introduced from other foreigncountries. Then, with the development of our society and technology, Chinese people’smaterial life has been improved, and they begin to pursue the spiritual enjoyment. Undersuch circumstances, the translation of films with original sounds and subtitle has gotmore recognition and welcome. Therefore, the subtitle translation is also paid attention toand faced corresponding challenges. However, this special field of subtitles translation in China is far behind the research from other countries. On the one hand, we shouldcontinue to standardize and improve translation theory system of film subtitles; on theother hand, it is essential to improve the translation level of subtitlers and the quality ofsubtitle translation.This paper is the research of subtitle translation from the perspective ofSkopostheorie, and takes the United States’ youth TV series “The Vampire Diaries” as acase study to analyze the subtitle translation methods in its first three seasons. And thelines of subtitling version of The Vampire Diaries are downloaded from the internet ofYYeTs. First of all, according to the theory of functional translation purpose, translationis a purposeful behavior; therefore, the subtitle translation is also a conscious act ofpurpose. Its main purpose is to make the most effective and most accurately way toconvey the needed information to better understanding and appreciating of the film inorder to attract more audiences. Secondly, based on the coherence rule, subtitletranslation should not only be coherent and rational in the context, but also natural andsmooth in sentence translation. Furthermore, according to the fidelity rule, the target textshould try to be in accordance with the original texts. That is to say, the translator cannotdeviate from the source language text information.“The Vampire Diaries” is an American TV series with a collection of fantasy, horrorand youth. The play is rewritten by the American woman writer L.J. Smith’s best-sellingnovel. It is fashionable and popular all over the world, and gets strongly recognition bythe majority of American TV fans. Based on Skopostheorie, this paper tries to exploreand analyze the general subtitle translation methods of “The Vampire Diaries”.Hopefully, this thesis can make a contribution for the future research and practice indealing with subtitle translation.