Communicative Contextual Adaptation To Subtitles Translation

With the frequent and in-depth cultural communication between Western countries and China, as a new area of cultural communication,the audio-visual culture has sprung up.Gossip Girlis about the rich kids’ life in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Due to the innovative plots and modern technology, it is popular among the youth all over the world, of course including China.Therefore, it could be regarded as a typical example onthe communication between China and America. As the TV series could be played only on the internet, the subtitle translation becomes critically important. Many researchers have studied it, such as the studies of the Skopo Theory to subtitle translation, cross-cultural communicational phenomenon to Chinese-English cultural communication and relevance theory to conflict talk from pragmatic perspective and so on. Few of them study it from the view of communicative contextual adaptation theory.This thesis analyzes the subtitle translation of the fifth season Gossip Girlbased on communicative contextual adaptation. From the aspects of social world, mental world and physical world, we can prove the powerful application ability ofcommunicative contextual adaptation theory(CCAT) on subtitle translation.By the study of subtitle translation of Gossip Girl, we find that in drama’s subtitle translation:(1) Communicative contextual adaptation theory is helpful for translators to translate characters’ mental worlds. Translators could comprehend the characters’ mental worlds and translate mental activities by the form of target language. It is helpful for building the mental communication between the drama and the audience.(2) Different communicators have different social worlds under different cultures. Communicative contextual adaptation theory is helpful for translators to keep the relatively high sensitivity in the process of translation, accurately translating the meaning of dramas and helping audiences understand dramas’ content.(3) The subtitle translation is the communication that crosses time and space.Communicative contextual adaptation theory is helpful for translators to consider physical factors, such as time and space, to satisfy the audiences’ needs. In a word, communicative contextual adaptation theory is helpful for improving the quality of subtitle translation and hasconsiderable feasibility and advantages on subtitle translation.