On Entertainment-oriented Rewriting In Subtitling

In order to cater to the pan-entertainment values of the modern society, there is anew tendency of entertainment-oriented rewriting in subtitling for the European andAmerican movies and TV dramas. This phenomenon has won the praise of themajority of the audience.Hermans, a famous British translation theorist, introduced the ManipulationTheory into the translation study for the first time. Following his steps, AndreLefevere carried forward the predecessor’s views by proposing the definition of the“rewriting”, pointing out that “All rewritings, whatever their intention, reflect acertain ideology and a poetics and as such manipulate literature to function in a givensociety in a given way” in his book named Translation, Rewriting, and theManipulation of Literary Fame.(Lefevere,2004: vii) And this theory, once proposed,has aroused strong repercussions in the translation industry and is constantly appliedto the subtitle translation of the foreign films and TV dramas.In recent years, a growing number of American TV series have been pouring intothe huge Chinese market through the Internet with an irresistible trend, among whichThe Big Bang Theory is relatively popular. Taking California as the background, thissitcom describes the stories of everyday life between four talented scientific nerds anda young beautiful restaurant waitress. Although the play is inevitably full of variouskinds of scientific theories that are not well known by the ordinary people, its plotsand language are imbued with wisdom and humor, which is largely owing to thesuccess of its subtitle translation. The network subtitle group, taking the rewritingtheory as the theoretical foundation, makes an extensive use of buzzwords, proverbsor sayings with Chinese characteristics to show the humorous effects of this playwhich highlights the uniqueness of its language among so many TV dramas.Many previous articles at home and abroad mostly focus on the linguistic andcultural study of this play, especially on the analysis of its verbal humor behaviors,narrative features and the cultural connotations. There is a relatively small number of articles concerning about its subtitle translation, many of which concentrate onapplying the Relevance Theory and Functional Equivalence Theory into the study ofit. In view of this, taking “The Big Bang Theory” as an example, this paper intends toanalyze the entertainment-oriented rewriting in subtitling, illustrating the use ofnetwork buzzwords, Chinese ancient proverbs and displacement of similar stuffs inthis play to explore the appropriate translation strategies from the perspective ofrewriting theory, which will be conductive to make up for the vacancies in this regard.Even though subtitle translation does not have a complete and systematic theoreticalsystem, there are still a growing number of scholars who are engaged in carrying outthe related researches. By exploring the corresponding translation strategies in varioussituations, the author expects to get more and more translation scholars to pay moreattention to the subtitle group and the entertainment-oriented rewriting in subtitlingwhich is increasingly taking place in the translation process in recent years.