A Functionalist Perspective On The Subtitle E-C Translation Of The Film A Separation

With the continuous growth of globalization and rapid development of the Internet, there has been a great increase in political, economical, and cultural communications among different countries and regions. In particular, the in-depth communication and exchange in cultural aspect has become more and more important. As an art compound closely combining both form and sound, and as one of the most significant components of the modern cultural carriers, film and its translation, which serve as a bridge connecting different countries, play an increasingly important role in transferring exotic cultural flavours as well as in deepening international cultural exchanges. In recent years, film subtitle translation and relevant studies on it are gaining more and more attention and interest from both scholars and language lovers. However, being a special branch of literary translation, the translation of film subtitles is a relatively immature field whether at home or abroad. Researches in this area are left far behind those in the translation of scientific, religious and other literary works. Moreover, a comprehensive theoretical framework has not been established by now to guide the various translational activities of film subtitles. Hence, it is increasingly important and necessary to carry out a systematic study on this specific arena.Since its very birth in the1970s, German Functionalism has been widely investigated and effectively applied in different areas of translation actions, which has given positive guidance to various translating practices. With a series of comparatively mature and influential theories, it is mainly composed of Katharina Reiss’s Text Typology, Hans J. Vermeer’s Skopostheorie, Holz Manttari’s Translational Action Theory and Christiane Nord’s Function plus Loyalty Theory. Closely connected with each other, these four aspects make up an organic integrity with their mutual inheritance and development. On the basis of linguistic functions, German Functionalism carries out researches on translational activities by focusing on the Skopostheorie. Being a theoretical system with multi-standards of translation, this theory regards source text and its culture as orientation, and highlights the translating purpose of achieving the expected goal of original text. In this way, it not only effectively breaks the restraints of Equivalence Theory, but also provides a brand new perspective for the current domestic and international translation studies. A Separation is an Iranian drama film written and directed by Asghar Farhadi. It tells a story about an Iranian middle-class couple who separate because of the immigration issue and the frictions which arise when the husband hires a lower-class nursing worker for his old father, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. With a rather limited budget of only$500,000, this film easily won forty-three pieces of international awards in less than two years after its very publication in2011. By way of focusing on the stories of ordinary Iranian families, A Separation shows a strong sense of life and reality. Although it seems only to describe the living conditions of contemporary Iranians, this masterpiece does reveal the religious power and social formation of Iran, and implicate the trenchant ranking of Iranian society.Against the background of the film’s various awards and international sensation, most attention has been directed to its religious meaning, political implication and feminist perspective. As the most significant means for exporting the content of the film, subtitles in A Separation are barely given enough importance. By adopting the theories of German Functionalism as its theoretical framework, this thesis makes a comparative study of the two chosen Chinese versions of subtitle translations of the film A Separation. In the view of Skopos Rule, Coherence Rule and Fidelity Rule of Hans J. Vermeer’s Skopostheorie, different renderings translated by the China Film Co., Ltd. and YYeTs Translating Group from the Internet are discussed and analyzed in depth to find out the potential factors bringing about the discrepancies of different translation works, as well as to verify the applicability of German Functionalism to the study of film subtitle translation. What’s more, through a systematic analysis of two distinctive subtitle translation versions, this research will be beneficial to the understanding of the problems during subtitle translation process and thus arouse people, especially scholars’interest and attention to it, and this, we hope, will be of value to the future development of subtitle translation study and practice.