A Study On Chinese Subtitles Of English Films From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Nowadays foreign-language films become more and more popular.Watching movies makes people not only identify themselves with the characters in the movies and run the gamut of the emotions,but also enjoy movies’ artistic features and broaden people’s knowledge of exotic cultures.However,limited by the language barrier,most of the audience have to read Chinese subtitles in the films.With the acceleration of globalization,and as more and more English films are increasingly imported to China,the translations of subtitles gradually enter into the public view and draw people’s attention.Based on the Acceptable Aesthetic theory,this paper studies the E-C subtitle translation from the horizon of audience’s expectation.This paper discusses the feasibility of application of Receptive Aesthetics to English subtitles translation and explores two stages of reception,i.e.translators’ reception and target language readers’ reception.Meanwhile,the paper puts forward that subtitle translation must satisfy the audience’s horizon of expectation so that the original English film can be accepted by the three aspects of scene,culture,and art.This paper also discusses some common translation mistakes existing in the process of translation and proposes some translation skills for subtitle translation.The study finds that,under the guidance of the Receptive Aesthetics,the translated subtitle can help Chinese audience easily understand the meanings of the movies.Furthermore,the study also finds that films cover a wide range of topics,and reflect various social cultures from different aspects.So films play a very important role in cross-culture communication.As a consequence,a translator should successfully complete subtitle translation work,so the audience can surpass the language impediment and realize the cross-culture communication while they appreciate the movie and get the meaning of it.