Translator’s Creative Treason In Chinese Film Subtitle Translation From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Film subtitle translation is of great significance for the promotion and publicity of a film, and the audience’s acceptance of a film directly reflects the quality of its subtitle translation. However, film subtitle translation is faced with strict requirements due to the differences of language expression, culture and customs, ways of thinking and aesthetic taste in China and the West and the temporal and spatial constraints of film subtitle. Subtitle translators sometimes have to adopt creative treason to overcome various limitations so as to maximize the indented audience’s acceptance.Reception Aesthetics takes the reader as the center, and holds that the reader’s reading and participation are the key factors to obtain the historical life and artistic value of the works. This paper discusses translator’s creative treason in film subtitle translation from the perspective of Reception Aesthetics. Firstly, the author explains the rationality and necessity of translator’s creative in film subtitle translation with "the role of the reader", "horizon of expectation", "appealing structure" and "fusion of horizons" in Reception Aesthetics. Subsequently, determining Linda Jaivin’s translation for the subtitle of "Farewell My Concubine" and "Great Master" as the research objects, the author takes three types of translator’s creative treason, namely individualized translation, mis-translation and omission, abridged translation and adapted translation as the standards to establish Linda Jaivin’s creative treason corpus. By means of qualitative and quantitative method and case study, the author makes a statistical and analytical survey on expressions of each type of translator’s creative treason, and puts forward the factors that influence the translator’s creative treason in the perspective of Reception Aesthetics.The study shows that individualized translation, abridged translation and adapted translation are most common in film subtitle translation. The translator’s creative treason is influenced by three factors:the translator’s familiarity with the language and culture of the source language, the translator’s judgment on the intended audience’s horizon of expectations, and the translator’s open interpretation of the appealing structure in the original subtitle text.