Chinese And English Plot Summaries For Movies:A Comparative Analysis Of Genre And Narrative

As one of the cultural products easily accepted by audiences in cross-cultural communication,the same movie tells the same story to people in different language societies.However,in practice,there are many differences in plot summary of Chinese and English movie websites for the same movie.The plot summary of the film is a brief introduction to the film,which shows the characteristics of the film story in the corresponding cultural context,and it will affect the audience's understanding of the film to a certain extent and whether they will accept and watch the film.To some extent,the difference between the plot summary of the same movie in Chinese and English language environment reflects the difference between Chinese and English story telling.Therefore,this study will analyze and compare the plot summary of Chinese and English movies in the same movie,and explore what are their narrative characteristics respectively?What are the differences between the narrative features of the two?This study mainly adopts the method of text analysis to make genre analysis and narrative analysis of 192 Chinese and English movie plot summaries in 96 movies.The study found that:firstly,in the aspect of macro genre structure,the communicative purpose of the plot summary of Chinese and English films is consistent,the genre structure and the step strategy are also similar,but the Chinese version has the last "evaluation" step,and the two are different in the use of the language step strategy.Secondly,about the narrator intervention in the micro narrative,the Chinese and English narrators differ in the form and content of the intervention in the story and the discourse.Thirdly,in the sequence arrangement and the character description,the English version prefer to follow the sequence of the film itself,and is inclined to define the characters directly,but the Chinese version is more consistent with the logical sequence of the thing itself,and is inclined to define the characters indirectly.Fourthly,in the attribution of growth and action of the characters,the Chinese version tends to external attribution while the English version tends to internal attribution.In addition,the Chinese and English versions also have obvious differences in the entry of the protagonists and the choice of events.Finally,this paper tries to explain the differences based on the movie type and Chinese and Western cultural background.If we want to speak well with Chinese stories in the world,we must understand the similarities and differences between Chinese and foreign stories firstly.The exploration of this article will be helpful to understand the characteristics and differences of the movie plot summary in different cultures,and then provide guidance for the introduction of future films and even the introduction of other similar types of stories.